tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22001031.post469359151590372409..comments2024-02-28T18:29:41.120-08:00Comments on Not of General Interest: Writing as habitundinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05589384016564587214noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22001031.post-88993368294356752542010-06-05T13:02:19.325-07:002010-06-05T13:02:19.325-07:00profacero--Philip Glass: heh. That's an intere...profacero--Philip Glass: heh. That's an interesting observation about writing more/better when in a metropolis. There's an energy in cities, as you say, that seems to feed the writing energy.undinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05589384016564587214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22001031.post-91443377376073063472010-06-02T09:32:58.882-07:002010-06-02T09:32:58.882-07:00This is slightly mean I suppose but the mechanical...This is slightly mean I suppose but the mechanical situation he describes shows in Glass' music. My vote is for writers' hours *and* a notebook.<br /><br />*<br /><br />I'm also realizing place is really really important and I should give up trying to train myself to be someone else. I'm in Mexico DF and it makes me write. So I realized all of my writing streaks and writing years have been while living in metropolises. Something about the easy availability of libraries, archives, bookstores; something about the way in which there are always exhibits and things happening that feed into the project; something about the energy that comes from feeling how many other people are doing things, too.<br /><br />At home I have writers' hours but they put me to sleep and/or are a space in which I feel more intensely my claustrophobia living in a micro-town that is also a university fishbowl. <br /><br />I feel guilty about this -- one should stay home, spend nothing, and be good, I was always taught -- but it's a fact, everything truly good I do is done somewhere urban, and I think I should just face that and take it into account.<br /><br />*<br /><br />All of this to say: writing is a habit, YES, but you need conditions in which you can make it a useful habit. <br /><br />*<br /><br />My micro-town is good for another kind of writing -- fiction, some kinds of journalism. It's good for imagination but it's not good for being incisive. I lived in a fairly large city in Brazil that had those characteristics, too.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com