The Writing Sickness...
Mar. 17th, 2004 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpI used to think that when writers - established storytellers who made a living at the writing racket - spoke of writing as a compulsive disorder, they were engaging in the same kind of wry, self-deprecatory humor one hears, say, from airborne-qualified troopers who describe their work as "jumping out of perfectly good airplanes." But the fact is, they mean it (and by "they" I mean both writers and soldiers ).
But lately, as I sit at my computer after a long day of laying someone else's Russian thoughts down on phosphor in English and start to write something in my LJ, I have become acutely aware of how the simple act of journal-keeping keeps that Something at bay, unable to trigger the "itch," as I used to call it back when the kids were little.
That relief comes double-edged from the factory. On the one hand, the lack of distraction has kept me more or less on track with my chosen profession (which affords me ample opportunity to "write for publication," as it were, since that's what translation really is). On the other, perhaps the writing of these frequent - and admittedly, often unimportant - essays is keeping me from achieving better things?
Personally, I think the latter is an echo of what that Something keeps trying to incite, but it really doesn't matter. There are more important things in life.
Cheers...
But lately, as I sit at my computer after a long day of laying someone else's Russian thoughts down on phosphor in English and start to write something in my LJ, I have become acutely aware of how the simple act of journal-keeping keeps that Something at bay, unable to trigger the "itch," as I used to call it back when the kids were little.
That relief comes double-edged from the factory. On the one hand, the lack of distraction has kept me more or less on track with my chosen profession (which affords me ample opportunity to "write for publication," as it were, since that's what translation really is). On the other, perhaps the writing of these frequent - and admittedly, often unimportant - essays is keeping me from achieving better things?
Personally, I think the latter is an echo of what that Something keeps trying to incite, but it really doesn't matter. There are more important things in life.
Cheers...
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-18 04:20 am (UTC)I'm just not sure... what. The Something that makes me want to play with my own words can be pretty insistent and difficult to hold at bay. LJ is good - but nope, no substitute for the very, very big Fiction Something, which is very large and has teeth :)
Trying to prove I'm stronger than said Something is very strange. I *can* beat it. I *will* resist the addiction. Or I'm trying, just as I'm trying to do those More Important Things. I just need to find out what they are and if I'm not just looking for greener grass on some other side.
Self-disciplined me says 'don't write. Do the ironing, etc. Have more quality time with family and friends'. More idealistic me says 'but I have better quality times with others when I'm happy, and I'm happy when I'm writing, so to hell with the ironing, etc.'. Hanging-on-the-fence me says 'but the quality times are shorter or non-existent when the obsession takes over. And writing doesn't just mean 'happy', it means work, concentration, ups and downs. So can't you be content with just a *little* of it?'.
So I guess I just need the three approaches to come to a consensus, right? Easier said than done.