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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3676 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 19, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Anyone else here have dreams of becoming a writer, but spends too much time working/procrastinating etc? Life just seems to busy to really carve out time for writing - even though I don't have kids.

Perhaps I'm just making excuses, but full time work + keeping up with the house cleaning + social life + family obligations takes a lot out of you.

“Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights.”

I wrote a 100k word novel once, and it was worth it. But it was also an incredible volume of work. The highs are very high, but most of the writing process is tedious. I don't blame GRRM and others for wanting to "be" a writer, without, you know.

Congrats on the novel, I’d imagine it is definitely tedious.

What was your life situation like when you wrote it, working full time or what?

Yes, though I wasn't keeping up with those house cleaning + social life + family obligations you speak of. Easy peasy computer job with time for eg Reddit browsing, though that didn't help with novel writing. Too many interruptions. You need to block out time to get anywhere.

I may be contradicting myself, but the time commitment isn't that crazy — reserving an hour a day for pure writing got me there after a year. It's just that the time you spend is not pleasant at all. Writing a novel is a vacuum cleaner for spare mental energy. You're thinking all day how you're going to translate a few bullet points into a chapter. And then you type your thoughts, one by one, in grueling ego battle. Often you end up staring at a page of work you grunted out and thinking, wow, this is worthless, I'm probably going to cut this in editing. And you do.

Not very fun compared to spending that same time browsing The Motte.

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