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Stupid Writing Rituals
Mar. 22nd, 2005 10:17 amI am having one of those scattered, frantically productive days. Everything I see reminds me of something I should be doing. Every program running on the computer, every object on my desk, everything.
I am excessively careful, I think, of stupid writing rituals. Whenever I find myself falling into one, I change it, because I don't want to talk myself into being the kind of writer who "cannot" write unless she has a cup of lemon chamomile tea, or the correct fountain pen with the correct color of ink, or the correct socks on, or an outline, or a lack of outline, or notecards, or a lack of notecards.
But the one I do not seem to be able to cure -- and this is frustrating me no end this morning -- is that I do not do revisions on the screen for anything longer than 2000 words. My brain just slides off them. I need the physicality of the whole wretched thing.
Which means that very shortly I will have to print out Thermionic Night to give it a good talking-to before sending it and handing it to my dear alpha-readers for this time through. It will not be a draft I can then pass on to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
markgritter and timprov. It is six-hundred-some pages of wasted paper. This is annoying me rather disproportionately. I thought that mentioning it in an e-mail might expunge the annoyance. But no. Still annoyed.
Writer-beings: do you have stupid writer rituals that annoy you? Have you gotten rid of them? How? And how do you tell the stupid rituals from the functional process?
Yarg.
I am excessively careful, I think, of stupid writing rituals. Whenever I find myself falling into one, I change it, because I don't want to talk myself into being the kind of writer who "cannot" write unless she has a cup of lemon chamomile tea, or the correct fountain pen with the correct color of ink, or the correct socks on, or an outline, or a lack of outline, or notecards, or a lack of notecards.
But the one I do not seem to be able to cure -- and this is frustrating me no end this morning -- is that I do not do revisions on the screen for anything longer than 2000 words. My brain just slides off them. I need the physicality of the whole wretched thing.
Which means that very shortly I will have to print out Thermionic Night to give it a good talking-to before sending it and handing it to my dear alpha-readers for this time through. It will not be a draft I can then pass on to
markgritter and timprov. It is six-hundred-some pages of wasted paper. This is annoying me rather disproportionately. I thought that mentioning it in an e-mail might expunge the annoyance. But no. Still annoyed.Writer-beings: do you have stupid writer rituals that annoy you? Have you gotten rid of them? How? And how do you tell the stupid rituals from the functional process?
Yarg.
