We be all up in your crib like furniture.
Jul. 15th, 2003 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raybearToday I got that fire, like Juvenile. I've done all sorts of random writing AND I've done some work and I have big plans for work projects I'm doing this afternoon. I don't even have that typical feeling of "yeah, yeah, you're all talk, but then you'll spend four hours on the internet", because guess what? I have a deadline. I love deadlines. I should use this more to help get work done, but self-imposed deadlines just don't cut it the same. I need the fear of retribution and hellfire or joblessness and starvation or at least the "I'm very disappointed in you and know you can do better" lecture.
One of the attorneys has been on sabbatical for two months. She left behind some nice piles of papers for me to take care of. Have I done it? No, of course not. When does she return? Monday. So I'm doing many weeks of work in three days. This excites me.
I wish I knew the origin of my work pathology. I know I'm not alone in this need for deadlines. It's the main motivation in how my novel got written last fall. I knew I only had thirty days to do it, and each day had it's own mini deadline in the form of a required word count.
But I should remember there was a large amount of self-motivation in that task. I didn't win any money or award or anything for completing the task of National Novel Writing Month other than the pure satisfaction of saying "I wrote a novel", which feels surprisingly good and addictive to say. I want to write another novel. It's like a tattoo. I had only had my first tattoo for all of ten minutes before I got the craving for a second. I've been riding the need for a third tattoo for three years. I want ink so bad and need to just commit a jar of money to the cause and stop whining about finances. Or take a tattooist as a lover who will ink me for free or in exchange for sexual favors.
I think grad school would be good for my writing, assuming I had flexibility and creative freedom. But some structure in the form of assignments would benefit my need for discipline and deadlines, especially since I've started to structure myself. I'm in the habit of writing now. When I go more than a day without it, I notice. I've gone back to writing on paper so that I don't actually go more than a day. I've also started to do private journaling, stuff only for myself, to get off my chest and out of my brain so I'll be less tempted to just dump here in a public forum for the sake of validation. On days when I post four or five times a day, I know I'm just bored or anxious or unwiling to focus my energy in a constructive. I go for quantity over quality, which isn't always bad (in fact, that's the whole point of National Novel Writing Month), but I also want to practice distilling my day into more potent pieces. I want to write one paragraph that captures my day, or an anecdote, or a character, rather than eight paragraphs that include everything I've eaten and every song I've heard and every magazine ad that annoys me.
Unless of course I'm writing the stream of consciousness of a character who's talking about all those things.
One of the attorneys has been on sabbatical for two months. She left behind some nice piles of papers for me to take care of. Have I done it? No, of course not. When does she return? Monday. So I'm doing many weeks of work in three days. This excites me.
I wish I knew the origin of my work pathology. I know I'm not alone in this need for deadlines. It's the main motivation in how my novel got written last fall. I knew I only had thirty days to do it, and each day had it's own mini deadline in the form of a required word count.
But I should remember there was a large amount of self-motivation in that task. I didn't win any money or award or anything for completing the task of National Novel Writing Month other than the pure satisfaction of saying "I wrote a novel", which feels surprisingly good and addictive to say. I want to write another novel. It's like a tattoo. I had only had my first tattoo for all of ten minutes before I got the craving for a second. I've been riding the need for a third tattoo for three years. I want ink so bad and need to just commit a jar of money to the cause and stop whining about finances. Or take a tattooist as a lover who will ink me for free or in exchange for sexual favors.
I think grad school would be good for my writing, assuming I had flexibility and creative freedom. But some structure in the form of assignments would benefit my need for discipline and deadlines, especially since I've started to structure myself. I'm in the habit of writing now. When I go more than a day without it, I notice. I've gone back to writing on paper so that I don't actually go more than a day. I've also started to do private journaling, stuff only for myself, to get off my chest and out of my brain so I'll be less tempted to just dump here in a public forum for the sake of validation. On days when I post four or five times a day, I know I'm just bored or anxious or unwiling to focus my energy in a constructive. I go for quantity over quality, which isn't always bad (in fact, that's the whole point of National Novel Writing Month), but I also want to practice distilling my day into more potent pieces. I want to write one paragraph that captures my day, or an anecdote, or a character, rather than eight paragraphs that include everything I've eaten and every song I've heard and every magazine ad that annoys me.
Unless of course I'm writing the stream of consciousness of a character who's talking about all those things.
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-15 03:10 pm (UTC)i'm in a deadline driven field and still manage to feel like a lazy-ass. but as one friend put it, people like us can do twice the work in half the time, so why not enjoy your workday a little more?
i dunno. maybe i should stop trying to be a goodie goodie and go be a productive stock broker.