I hate writing.

I tend to think of it as sharper than clay, but maybe that's because I tend to do mostly work-related writing. For me it's more like fitting pieces together, like Legos. They have to fit and click together just right, then you have a unit that you can try to click together with another piece, and another.

I usually start with a few images I like and then come up with a story so I can use them. But I'm usually too lazy to actually write them. Maybe I should take a creative writing class... again... and again... and again...

On Writing

I'm off writing temporarily. I should be hooked again soon, though.

The weird thing is that, for me, it almost gets painful if I work too long. I don't know how to explain it; but like after half an hour of writing, it just starts to feel intense and overwhelming. I try to power through it, and usually can (especially if it's for work and there are deadlines involved), but it feels pretty unpleasant.

I get the writing-as-mechanical-process feeling you're talking about if I'm doing an article of some kind, and I'm really conscious about the nuts and bolts of how things are supposed to flow. I kind of hate that, actually; I think it's useful to be able to see things that way, but it takes away the magic, at least for me.

I spent most of my life, from the time I was six until my 30s, as an increasingly frustrated writer. I hammered out stories and characters and plots, and they always failed me. Or I failed them.

Whatever alchemy good authors perform to make their words more than simply words, I couldn't do it.

Then I started college, and was assigned my first research paper. As I threaded together disparate ideas from primary and secondary sources, as I constructed a complex argument, as I sat tapping the keys and listening to them sing their private song, I felt something solid slide home inside my mind. This is the writing I was meant to do. Aha! It's not easy, god no, but it's so utterly satisfying.

I've taken time off from classes this year. Lately, I've been dreaming about school, and about sitting crosslegged before my laptop, a semi-circle of haphazardly stacked books around me, their pages speckled with post-its, a pencil behind my ear and a cup of coffee beside me. This dream --- it's like coming home.

In my mind, it's like playing with an erector set, though I've rarely used an erector set. You have these set pieces, and these machined bits, and you can combine them in any way to build something from a jumbled box of junk. When it works, I know! I can see the gears move! It makes my heart thump as if I've taken flight.

For that reason, it feels nothing like sculpting or painting to me --- I never have that thrilling feeling of flight from producing art in clay or on canvas.

I tend to conceptualize writing more as wrestling muddy, greasy little bastard ideas into something palatable— it's very much about bringing the whip down and making things fit right. My inner Nazi German?

Writing to me is like mosquitos buzzing in my head that don't settle down until I get the idea down somewhere. Seriously.

jonmc, I relate to that: during those years of trying to write fiction, I described it as hornets in my brain.

How interesting to read about the way other people imagine writing as a physical thing! The puzzle pieces, the erector set, the mosquitos...I wonder how widespread that is! It would be cool to interview major writers about that. Not that I need another product.

My attempts at fiction writing were always like Elsa's, only instead of buzzing bees it was kinda like a turning flywheel. I'd haul on it to get it going, it would whir around like gangbusters for a page or two, then gradually slacken and slow down. I just couldn't make things happen to move the story along. This was a frustration, since in high school and college I was somewhat classed as a 'creative writer' and was in a lot of classes and programs focusing on fiction and poetry, and yet inside I knew I didn't have it, the making-up-stories thing.

It wasn't until I discovered nonfiction writing, like Elsa, that I really started to dig it. I love the details of real people and the real world, and love taking the convoluted tangle of events, ideas, names, things, and from that mess pulling a single, clear filament of a logically organized story that takes a reader from not-knowing to knowing. It bothers me, now, that there's not more emphasis on 'creative nonfiction' in secondary and university education. Not only is it every bit as artistic when done really well, there are a lot more jobs in nonfiction writing! I guess it's the difference between being a great jazz vocalist interpreting material, and a great original jazz composer. Related arts, but not the same.

Despite the exhaustion that comes from squeezing in too-large writing projects around a 'real job,' I must say I always really feel happy when I'm at it. Here I am in my PJs on a weekday morning, sipping coffee, and snipping my almost-finished piece here and there. I should heed this signal and make writing more a part of my future career. I honestly think I'd love to do a few books, once I can settle on a great pop-history topic that would interest me for a while.

How interesting!

When I was in college and writing academic papers, I could tell things were going swimmingly when I'd get a very strong visual of the threads of warp and weft in a loom, or of a long, many-stranded braid being completed. And nonfic I can just bang out because it's a question of aggregating data, not making stuff up.

Fiction writing is hard for me, though. I do pretty well when I'm in a class with a deadline and all that jazz, but I have a really hard time coming up with characters and plot. Which is why I usually steal from folklore. If it was good enough for 16th century peasants, by god, it's good enough for me.

Definitely echoing Elsa -- my fiction enterprises have always been doomed to frustrating failure. And I love the erector set metaphor for academic work -- that's what I was trying to get at with the Legos, but I think you hit what I meant better, because there is that sense of soaring up to a new level I get when an idea starts pulling together, and inspiring other ideas. A bit like pole vaulting.

Except, the pole vaulter would have to land up at a higher level than she started. And there'd be another pole at that level, too. And maybe buildings and stuff.

Nevermind.