tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8839584506001378073.post5091963174767180903..comments2023-10-30T22:39:14.941+11:00Comments on Jonathan Gould, Writer: Writing makes my brain hurtJonathan Gouldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06169533695637011148noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8839584506001378073.post-11250053424782728962014-07-19T20:34:58.853+10:002014-07-19T20:34:58.853+10:00In some respects I’m a lazy writer. If I’m not in ...In some respects I’m a lazy writer. If I’m not in the mood I don’t write. I don’t do nothing—I very rarely do nothing—but I don’t force myself to write. I could never earn a living from writing because I don’t have the right mindset. To be honest I’ve never really tried. I’ve never wanted writing to become work at least not <i>that</i> kind of work. Don’t get me wrong, I like work. I like activity that’s productive even if it’s not necessarily creative and I’ve never really had a job that I didn’t enjoy so I’m not really sure where this fear that writing might become the wrong kind of work comes from but it is there. Since I’ve been online however I have developed a daily schedule of writing and over the last seven years I’ll have written literally millions of words—the thought of rattling off a thousand words in a day’s a walk in the park—but I don’t cherish those words like I do my fictional work; that’s the <i>real</i> writing. <br /><br />I don’t think my brain hurts after a long writing session. Usually it wants to go on but it’s the rest of me that needs to stop. I’m getting a lot better at stopping when I’m tired and trusting that I can pick up where I left off the following day. There was a time when I believed in something I thought of as inspiration—it’s not really the right word but it’ll do—and when this came it was important that I use it all up because there was no guarantee that I’d feel inspired the next day or even ever again and so I would keep at it for hours and hours and it never did me any harm but now I have a fairly structured life and know, for example, that I can count on two and a half hours in the afternoon and that’s mostly when I write and what doesn’t get finished one day gets picked up the next.<br /><br />But you are right. There’re those who think that sitting at a desk all day is a cushy wee number and it is compared to most jobs but to suggest that it’s not tiring is just wrong.<br />Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.com