Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Writing Vampire

Pack, get up at the crack of dawn, travel, work on something else entirely, return, wash clothes. Repeat that a couple of times and it does wonders for your writing schedule, as in "makes any concentration impossible." Not for everyone--there are stalwarts among you all--but I am so far from being in the writing zone that I'll have to schedule another trip just to get there.

I had lunch with a friend today, a writer. When the talk turned to writing, I couldn't stop asking her about it. So you write every morning? How many hours do you put in? You have a writing group? How is it going?

As she talked, I realized that I was drinking in this story of the writing process. It was gratifying to hear from someone who was doing successfully what I was failing to do this week, and it was also just guilt-inducing enough to make me want to try again, with renewed effort.

Gratifying and guilt-inducing. Filling up some need I had to hear about writing going well.

Yes, blog friends, I have become a writing vampire.

9 comments:

Earnest English said...

. . .I am so far from being in the writing zone that I'll have to schedule another trip just to get there.

Effing brilliant. Even if I could write about not writing, I doubt I could've said it so perfectly. Exactly.

Here's to scheduling a safe trip to the writing zone.

P said...

I find myself in and out of the zone. Thank to the gods, I'm in it now.

I love the writing vampire metaphor!

Sisyphus said...

Writing vampires? Cool!

Anonymous said...

OMG, in grad school, I wrote a poem using the writer-as-vampire metaphor (was at an all-night coffee shop writing a paper on the gothic that was due the next morning, LOL).

Love it!

Dame Eleanor Hull said...

I get so much work done on planes and in airports that I sometimes think I should just schedule trips to nowhere so as to finish this or that.

undine said...

Thanks, EE! I'm hoping that the trip I'm on now will have this effect, but its main effect has been a nap (very unusual for me).

P--can you spare me a cup of zone mojo?

Sisyphus, I fear a lot of Twilight fans will have been lured to this blog under false pretenses :).

Ink--you should post your paper.

Dame Eleanor, sometimes it works that way for me and I have hopes for this trip still.

Anonymous said...

Are you me? Did I write this? You have put into words something I do a lot -- thanks!

undine said...

nicoleandmaggie, I'm glad I'm not the only one!

Anonymous said...

I just saw your note: ha!

Ok, it starts like this: "When twilight slants the day into fade..."

Then there's a bit about coming out of the shadows and stalking metaphors and well, it's not pretty.

However, I must note this was before all the TWILIGHT! hoopla, so that is NOT a reference to Team Edward or Team Jacob or whatever. It was just about, you know, about twilight as being the beginning of the good writing time...