Writing about tiredness

Writing when tired is almost never a good idea. You can feel sleep creeping up your limbs, your mind is more or less a vacuum, and if you’re like me, you might have skipped a meal or two because you were trying to finish something.

But then, sometimes vacuum is one of the best spaces to write in, and out of nowhere, bone-tired after a 16-hour day, I’ve suddenly got an idea how to finish a short story. I wonder I did not see it coming all along, and now that it has come, I want to put it down on paper rightaway.

So, off I go to do some writing. On another note, I have started writing more now that I’ve stopped keeping count!

Writing on group writing

I have been wondering whether to join a writer’s group, an online one at the moment, but maybe someday even an off-line one.

I am not convinced either way…yet.

Are any of you part of writer’s groups? If you are, would you like to share your experiences?

Writing, writer, determination

“I see a writer’s ability as standing on three legs, like the tripods Homer speaks of as being dedicated to the gods. Talent, experience, and literary background. Add to these the container that holds the flame: determination.”– David Poyer

I have read this quote over and over again the past few days. I’ve been wondering what are the odds of me ever becoming a true writer, given that the only thing I seem to possess is the container that holds the flame–determination.

Writing about rain, storm

This morning, I’ve woken to a storm. Or may be I actually woke to the threat of one. Dark skies, distant rumbles, an occasional streak over the trees far away. The wind came through the open windows and made billowing sails of my red curtains.

And then it came, the angry storm, in drops as big as my palm, the gale carrying them almost parallel to the ground. I shut down all doors and windows and retreated behind my desk. It has been raining for a quarter of an hour now, and I cannot see much beyond the hazy outlines of nearby houses. The roads and the cars that must be speeding down them are invisible. I can see yellow lights in windows at 8 am.

Another new day.

Strange how nature sometimes decides to reflect the landscape within you. Think I will go stand outside on my balcony, let the shower cool my spirit.

Writing on blogging: to blog or not to blog

I have been getting hundreds of visits from condron.us after submitting to their site. So the hit counter looks good. But the number of comments do not.

I have never been very good at getting comments on any of my blogs, but I think, even my writing blog, which gets fewer visitors, gets more comments. This blog, which many mention to me in conversations, Malaysians as well as people further afield, gets comments only from Darc, Annie, Kym and Indigo. Thanks, guys.

Time to upgrade my content on this blog, I think, which I’ve been using more or less as a journal. But recently, I’ve felt that I have a lot riding piggy-back on me, and I have hardly any energy left over for committed, enthusiastic blogging.

I suppose these are phases. For the last month I’ve preferred to write in my notebook, and do other kinds of writing—blogging has somewhat taken a back seat.

The question is: should I only blog when the urge takes me– which could be once a month–or keep tapping away everyday not only to justify the name of this blog but also hoping that I’ll get my blogging rhythm back?

Writing and self-doubt

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

~Sylvia Plath

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I’ve come across many budding writers who are scared to open up, to write about what affects them the most. It takes courage to spill out blood and guts. I’m not sure yet if it is ok to publish it as it is, unchanged, but it is definitely necessary to write down the experiences. These experiences, when dug out mercilessly and without self-pity, form the fount of some of the most moving fiction.

Write or Die

Writing practice ideas

I’ve been having a lot of fun with Write or Die these past few days. I always choose the Kamikaze option, and the best I’ve manged is about 600 words in ten minutes, but that is also cos I’m a lousy typer! Well, the output is hardly presentable, but between this site and Onetwofiver I’m all sorted out where writing practice is concerned. Not stuff you would send to an editor, but the kind of garbage that needs to come out before you start your writing day. Today’s onetwofiver led to this:

The joy of writing lies in letting a world, people and events emerge in my head, and then jump through the portal of my hands on to a screen or paper, from where they can make the transition into another head, another imagination. They then transmute, change, take on different appearances. For no two heads can ever have the same fancy, and fancy colors all to which it is a home.

On some days it is hard, and meaningless. There is no thought, let alone creation. But who knows, these could be good days too, because it is in the land of no thought that the biggest ideas are born.

Thought is an enemy to a certain extent, it can be allowed in only when the muse has done her mad dance, her hair flying, her laughter ringing in the imagination. She adjusts her clothes, changes her stance, and spreads her cloak holding all that shine and sparkle and darkness under her, giving birth to people, to ideas, to entire worlds.

And then comes thought, with its twin blades of logic and reason, and sets about cutting and snipping and trimming. And finally they are ready, the children of my muse, to travel using the written word, to invade curious minds, to make new homes in different arbors of imagination.

How do you like to do your daily writing practice?

Writing off the cuff

Writing on reading Sula

I have found recently that writing off the cuff is not as easy as it once was. My mind was not complicated earlier by words like plot, structure, pace, POV…

Nor is reading as easy. Because though I immensely enjoyed reading “Sula” by Toni Morrison, I was analyzing it at the same time…how did she do this or that or another?

How about you? Do you think learning more on how to write limits your spontaneity in some way?

Writing about pondering questions

Does this hold true for writing?

“If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”

Writing about gritting teeth

Writing can be a challenge some days—today was one of those.

The reality of the following line hit home today:

So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having marred it.  ~Harold Acton, Memoirs of an Aesthete, 1948