Origami for Writers
Friday, February 26th, 2010 03:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniSo, I've boxed up the ends of one search, here at the day-job, and expect in the near future to box up the remains of the other two. So that I can start the record-keeping and filing associated with a fourth. Eventually, I'll haul the stuffed-to-overflowing paper boxes up to the third floor space that has newly been designated a Secure Area for confidential files. And there they all will sit for three years, until it's time to schlepp them back downstairs and call the shredding service.
A thrill a minute, no?
As I was shifting files into boxes, I thought, in the aimless sort of way that one does when pursuing a task that is virtually mindless, about truncation -- which sounds dire, and after all isn't quite what I mean. What I mean is. . .folding. About being folded. About folding oneself.
Yesterday afternoon, I was interviewed by a student here at the day-job who provides content to the college's website in the form of podcasts. I'm a "unsung hero." Who knew? Anyhow, it was a nice interview, and I had good time explaining that my day-job consisted of bringing Order out of Chaos, and then she asked. . .an old question, really.
How do you write books -- so many books -- and do your day-job, too?
The first part of the answer to that is simple enough: You come home from the day-job, you apply your butt to the sofa, or to the chair in your home office and you damwell write. That's what gets the job done; nothing else will.
The rest of the answer is: And there's very little, if any, time left over to do anything else.
So you wind up...folding yourself; contracting; concentrating wholly on the work...and the work.
Now, it's a truism -- and in some times, a relief -- that, while a writer is writing, they needn't think about anything else. It's kind of a pass on having too much reality in your life. You may not, but I know that I sometimes suffer from Too Much Reality, and writing is not only an escape, but it's justified. We're under contract!
No matter how much of a relief, though, one needs tocome out from under one's rock surface, eventually, and deal.
It's when you surface that you realize just how much -- or how little -- you folded yourself this time.
It's wonderful how very closely one can concentrate in the folded state; unfolding makes things...fizz and blur, like coming out of a long convalescence: Oh, I used to know how to do that (whatever it is); I wonder if I still do? Or still dare?
What do you do, to unfold, and flex?
A thrill a minute, no?
As I was shifting files into boxes, I thought, in the aimless sort of way that one does when pursuing a task that is virtually mindless, about truncation -- which sounds dire, and after all isn't quite what I mean. What I mean is. . .folding. About being folded. About folding oneself.
Yesterday afternoon, I was interviewed by a student here at the day-job who provides content to the college's website in the form of podcasts. I'm a "unsung hero." Who knew? Anyhow, it was a nice interview, and I had good time explaining that my day-job consisted of bringing Order out of Chaos, and then she asked. . .an old question, really.
How do you write books -- so many books -- and do your day-job, too?
The first part of the answer to that is simple enough: You come home from the day-job, you apply your butt to the sofa, or to the chair in your home office and you damwell write. That's what gets the job done; nothing else will.
The rest of the answer is: And there's very little, if any, time left over to do anything else.
So you wind up...folding yourself; contracting; concentrating wholly on the work...and the work.
Now, it's a truism -- and in some times, a relief -- that, while a writer is writing, they needn't think about anything else. It's kind of a pass on having too much reality in your life. You may not, but I know that I sometimes suffer from Too Much Reality, and writing is not only an escape, but it's justified. We're under contract!
No matter how much of a relief, though, one needs to
It's when you surface that you realize just how much -- or how little -- you folded yourself this time.
It's wonderful how very closely one can concentrate in the folded state; unfolding makes things...fizz and blur, like coming out of a long convalescence: Oh, I used to know how to do that (whatever it is); I wonder if I still do? Or still dare?
What do you do, to unfold, and flex?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-02-26 08:33 pm (UTC)I don't know. I flip states frequently between writing (programs in my case) and not, and don't usually have much problem except that when I'm in writing state I tend not to notice other things and get surprised by "what do you mean, it's time to go home, I haven't had lunch yet!" (or in audio mixing state when it's likely to be "why is it light already?", I tend to do that starting in the evening). But other times I'll flip state several times in an hour.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-26 09:52 pm (UTC)That's so brilliant! I have to sit with this for a bit.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-27 12:37 am (UTC)Game Development almost invariably ends up in a hellish crunch of overtime, living at your desk, and over the course of months stripping away from your life everything that isn't work or sleep. No time with family, no time with friends, no hobbies, only the project. In some truly horrific environments it doesn't end up there, they start it that way.
And then it suddenly runs into a brick wall, and stops. Entirely.
And you sit there, at home, during the few weeks you get at the end of the project that are ostensibly compensation for overtime, wondering "I know there were things I enjoyed when I wasn't asleep and I wasn't at work. What were they?".
Yeah. There is a reason I don't do that anymore.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-27 12:52 am (UTC)Troy
no subject
Date: 2010-02-27 01:13 am (UTC)But I think the question has to do with emerging from a different state. The second state is that pared down to the bone existence where anything that isn't either the day job or writing is dispensed with.
A friend of mine calls the all-writing-all-the-time state "being a writer nun." But that doesn't encompass the role required by one's daylighting. Emerging from the extremes of doing both really is like unfolding oneself from a kind of mental origami.
What do I do to unfold and flex? That's a really good question, and maybe I haven't done it justice. But to answer now instead of next year, for me, it is just looking at pretty things and not trying to use the part of the brain that thinks how to use what I'm seeing or feeling in the writing at hand.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-27 04:35 am (UTC)I probably should have exercised or walked :/
Lauretta
mental origami
Date: 2010-02-27 04:45 am (UTC)To unfold, I reread my comfort books, usually Lee & Miller, Janet Kagan & P.C. Hodgell in regular rotation (luckily at least you are adding to the comfort shelf on a regular basis!). And I recreationally write, though none of my stories will ever see the light of day, it helps me relax and escape the worries of meeting payroll and the constant barrage of responsibilities.