Time. When you are setting out there is seemingly endless time to write, at least until life intervenes, and things like school, love, marriage, children, mortgages, and housing come about. Then there is that JOB, the great time-sucking machine that drains your energy even as it nourishes you and yours.
But still you preserve a small sanctuary, a fragment of time where there is nothing but you, your muse, and a blank sheet of paper* onto which you will pour your soul. But the kids need attention, your spouse needs food in the house, and you've got to have some social life, don't you? Time begins to slip through your fingers.
First you skip an hour of writing, then it's an evening, a weekend, or vacation time. Little by little your sanctuary of writing time is eroded. When you do manage to wrest some time for the muse you suddenly find that she has abandoned you, fled to visit some hack with no talent who will probably get a fucking Nebula or Hugo for their illiterate work. So you stare at the blank sheet of paper* and wait for the words to come, the inspiration to lift you to rapturous realms of poesy, to set your fingers dancing on the keys.
Uncertainty starts as a small worry: what if you no longer have the spark that set your feet on the climb to greatness. What if you have already used up what little talent you might have had? What if the family, job, and friends have drained you of all your creative energy?
Over the years these doubts pile up as you struggle to eke out writing time - a paragraph here, a line there, an idea for a complete scene, or even GASP a novel! You begin to think that it is a senseless venture, this writing urge, this pathetic attempt to talk to the universe and explain some aspect of the messy lives we all live. Nevertheless, you keep on as best you can and even if you never achieve the heights you desired you will know that you have done your very best.
That's all a writer can hope for.
But still you preserve a small sanctuary, a fragment of time where there is nothing but you, your muse, and a blank sheet of paper* onto which you will pour your soul. But the kids need attention, your spouse needs food in the house, and you've got to have some social life, don't you? Time begins to slip through your fingers.
First you skip an hour of writing, then it's an evening, a weekend, or vacation time. Little by little your sanctuary of writing time is eroded. When you do manage to wrest some time for the muse you suddenly find that she has abandoned you, fled to visit some hack with no talent who will probably get a fucking Nebula or Hugo for their illiterate work. So you stare at the blank sheet of paper* and wait for the words to come, the inspiration to lift you to rapturous realms of poesy, to set your fingers dancing on the keys.
Uncertainty starts as a small worry: what if you no longer have the spark that set your feet on the climb to greatness. What if you have already used up what little talent you might have had? What if the family, job, and friends have drained you of all your creative energy?
Over the years these doubts pile up as you struggle to eke out writing time - a paragraph here, a line there, an idea for a complete scene, or even GASP a novel! You begin to think that it is a senseless venture, this writing urge, this pathetic attempt to talk to the universe and explain some aspect of the messy lives we all live. Nevertheless, you keep on as best you can and even if you never achieve the heights you desired you will know that you have done your very best.
That's all a writer can hope for.
*This is a metaphor for computer, for God's sake!
#SFWApro
We've all been there, Bud! Great re-design on the site, by the way!
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