TheBanyanTree: On Writing

[Laura]

On 14 Jun 2011 at 9:47, Monique Colver wrote:

> But to be a writer and not be a hobbyist, I have to make myself sit down
> every day and write. I may not feel like it. Inspiration may elude me.
> Words may trickle through my brain haphazardly, waiting in vain for
> something to alight on, and I may feel that a rousing good game of Plants
> vs. Zombies would be more fun.
> 
> Which it would, which is why no one pays me to play Plants vs. Zombies.
> (Which is really a shame, because I'm quite good at it.)

Oooh, me too!  I'm an excellent PvZ player.  I've won the whole game several times, and 
have won nearly all the awards, even the silly ones, like win all the roof scenarios with no 
catapult plants.

Y'all have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?  Oh, well.  See, that's why I'm not a 
writer.  I've got lots of things I'd rather do besides write.  PvZ, Minecraft, Zuma, Spider 
Solitaire.  Heck, I'll even stoop as low as to throw the ball or the frisbee for the dogs, should 
they so desire, and they always so desire.

But I don't enjoy writing so much.  It strains my brain. Sometimes I get a writing bug stuck in 
my brain, and I have to write to get it out, but even that isn't what I'd call enjoyable.  It's 
more like scratching a bad case of poison ivy - you can't NOT do it, but it doesn't really feel 
"good".

I used to write a lot, when the kids were little.  I'd put them to bed, and in the quiet of the 
evening, all the cute little things they'd done throughout the day would flood my brain, and 
I'd have to write them all down, lest they get lost in time and space, and forgotten forever.

Or sometimes, I'd go out to do some mundane chore, like taking out the trash, and get 
caught up in the cool of the night, or the flickering permanence of the stars, or the fury of 
the wind and storms, and those feelings would rush out of my fingers and onto the paper.  
Er... screen.

Now I find that most of what I write is whinging, and I don't want to be known as a whinger.  I 
guess I am a whinger, but I don't want to be known for it. So I write and delete.  Once it's 
written out, I find I don't need it any more.

I suppose I'd make a better editor than a writer.  I can always pick apart other people's 
writing.  Hmmm... actually, I think I'd be a proof-reader.  It has been told to me that editors 
do much more than mere proof-reading, and that might take too much brain power.  Yeah, 
I'll just proofread your stuff.  That way, I don't have to think very hard, and I can show you 
how much smarter I am than you.  I like that. I must, I spend hours proof-reading other 
people's posts on FaceBook, and thinking what idiots they must be to want to show off to the 
world their incompetence (heh, heh - spell check wants to change that to "incontinent") with 
the English language.

When they make mistakes, it's because they're idiots.  When I make the same mistakes, it's 
a typo.

<yawn>  Sorry, what were we talking about?  Oh, never mind.  I have a house to build in 
Minecraft.

-- 
Wolfie
wolfljsh at gmail.com