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Writing Life
Jan. 6th, 2016 07:49 pmThe weather has resumed its light, drizzly rain. At least the cats enjoyed the better part of yesterday running around in the great outdoors. The weather should be clearing again tomorrow and through the weekend.
My scribble journal has become a weather reel, and the cats are the center of its universe. I am not happy about that, but I am not really fighting against it either. But I ought to remember that I feel better about myself when I am writing. There is a chattiness about it that feels almost social, as if the page were a living and breathing friend and we are enjoying a good, stress-relieving conversation.
I should always have a page open, a 'conversation' going. The problem, or one problem, is that I waste so much time, in addition to all the time that is sucked up in a thousand endless chores, so that I end up feeling like I have fallen terribly behind on my reading and just cannot spare the time. It does not help that there is a sense of 'work' in writing, a demand on creativity, in writing even a blurty post, relating even the most trivial aspect of this mundane existence, making it easier just to pick up the book and try to catch up on some of that lost time. It is hard to overcome the feeling that it is a more meaningful use of my time to read more pages of Thomas Mann's "Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man" than to struggle a little over how best to write about my digestion, or about Pop's social life, or the antics of the cats, or the weather. However, I do not get that somewhat fulfilling sense of sociability in reading a book that I get from writing even the most inconsequential notes. Just as reading is more active than watching television, so is writing more active than reading. The trick, I guess, is to be able to start writing. It is too easy to turn away from the blank page and to pick up the brilliantly filled pages of a great writer, and easier yet to watch another episode of "The West Wing", and just let this dreary life of a well-loathed man run out.
My scribble journal has become a weather reel, and the cats are the center of its universe. I am not happy about that, but I am not really fighting against it either. But I ought to remember that I feel better about myself when I am writing. There is a chattiness about it that feels almost social, as if the page were a living and breathing friend and we are enjoying a good, stress-relieving conversation.
I should always have a page open, a 'conversation' going. The problem, or one problem, is that I waste so much time, in addition to all the time that is sucked up in a thousand endless chores, so that I end up feeling like I have fallen terribly behind on my reading and just cannot spare the time. It does not help that there is a sense of 'work' in writing, a demand on creativity, in writing even a blurty post, relating even the most trivial aspect of this mundane existence, making it easier just to pick up the book and try to catch up on some of that lost time. It is hard to overcome the feeling that it is a more meaningful use of my time to read more pages of Thomas Mann's "Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man" than to struggle a little over how best to write about my digestion, or about Pop's social life, or the antics of the cats, or the weather. However, I do not get that somewhat fulfilling sense of sociability in reading a book that I get from writing even the most inconsequential notes. Just as reading is more active than watching television, so is writing more active than reading. The trick, I guess, is to be able to start writing. It is too easy to turn away from the blank page and to pick up the brilliantly filled pages of a great writer, and easier yet to watch another episode of "The West Wing", and just let this dreary life of a well-loathed man run out.
