The Time Problem

The problem is time. Considering this blog's inertia you'd think maybe I have been suffering from a lack of time. Sadly, the opposite is true; there's too much of the damn stuff. In fact, the only time I'm in a hurry these days is when I'm trying to squirrel time away down the back of the couch or stuffing it into cupboards before guests arrive to give the appearance that I've been using it since the last visit.

Time stretches out before me in all directions like an infinite radial plain and the choice of direction is crippling: Should do this? Or that? Should I write a novel about this? Or one about that? Should it even be a novel? Short stories, then? A blog?

I make it to the first fork in the road - maybe camp there for the night - before heading home and re-rolling. And there's no penalty. Nothing is lost, only time.

This is made double by a recent and profound dislike in my own writing. I can hardly get through half a page before sighing bitterly, chucking it in for the day and mainlining episodes of Orphan Black.

Last week @AdviceToWriters tweeted a Howard Ogden quote "Hating your own writing is necessary but not sufficient". To me, it means hating your own stuff is a given and not a sufficient enough reason to quit. I need to remember that next time I'm picking fragments of my laptop off the floor.