If there's anything that I've realized tonight, It's pretty hard to write when you've just come home from a day's work.
That's not because I'm tired, mind you. For the record, I am tired -- I spent the whole day checking and rechecking a bunch of contracts, and on top of that, one of my servers decided to roll over and play dead three straight times in the last twenty-four hours. (The German executives who owned the data inside were not very amused.) But I was able to drag myself in front of the computer to wrap something up for a freelance assignment, and if I can do that, then I can certainly log into this website and write something.
Besides, I've already been writing for a while now. One of the things that you do once you've been writing for a few years involves being able to force yourself to write. There's no guarantee that you'll be able to magically come up with a good plot, of course, but it does encourage you to get off your duff and make some healthy use of your time.
No, I'm not finding it difficult to write because I'm tired. Heck, I'm writing now despite the fact that I'm a bit weary of the day's developments.
That's not to say that I have a shortage of ideas right now, either. I still have quite a few ideas floating around my head, if only because I'd like to come up with something that'll get published this year. I think about them every now and then, trying to mold them into the stories that they should become when they grow up... so I suppose it's fair enough to say that I'm not lacking for any ideas at the moment.
No, I think that the reason why I find it difficult to write at the moment is the fact that I've been thinking about work all day. As a result, it's hard for me to shift my thoughts at this time of night -- I inevitably find myself thinking about my plans for tomorrow, after all. Logic tells me that I should still write about what happens to be on my mind at the moment, but to be honest, I'd rather not barrage you with tales of my office life. I should have better things to post about.
I should try tinkering with a new approach here. Maybe a hard shift in thought -- some point in time where I stop thinking about work and start thinking about, say, purple unicorns -- might help. Or maybe I could simply find some way to relax without having to stare at a blinking screen for a while; that way, I'll be working from scratch when I finally power up the ol' monitor-and-keyboard.
And if all else fails, there's always the third option -- when you can't think of anything to write about, then you can write about the fact that you can't think of anything to write about.
Hey, it did work for this post. Look, ma, three hundred words! :)
4 comments:
Haha, that happened to me and my sister once. We were both staring at our notebooks for a long time, and ended up writing practically the same thing a few hours later. We both wrote about how we can't think of anything to write about.
Hmm... maybe you can take a few days off of work so you can write?
Ida: At least we both know that it works. :)
I did consider the possibility of taking a few days off to write, but I don't think that it'll be worth it. Apart from the fact that my workload's likely to reach unmanageable levels while I'm gone, I'm also likely to squander my free time with bags of Cheetos and bottles of Mountain Dew.
No, I think I'll try to keep up this momentum first... it might be tiring, but it does help maintain my work ethic.
I usually write first thing in the morning to avoid that very scenario. =) Of course cutting down your sleep to six hours isn't necessarily a good thing...
Charles: I don't even sleep six hours most of the time. :)
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