Twitter
Facebook
Flickr
Tumblr
Last.fm
RSSLame Writer
Feb 11
Random digital audio recorder, essay, PowerPoint, writer's block, writing 1 Comment
It sucks when you have writer’s block and end up staring at the blinking cursor on your monitor or doodling on a yellow legal-sized paper. But what really sucks is that while you’re writing, you get stucked halfway. You write blah-blah-blah, then, dot-dot-dot. You can’t write anything else. All of your thoughts get muddled. It’s like popping popcorn in the microwave oven, you get excited eating it, the popping sound makes you salivate. You enjoy seeing the bag of popcorn rotate inside the oven. The smell of freshly popped popcorn tickles your nose, then suddenly a power interruption interrupts your popping business. Annoyance takes over your excitement. Everything you’ve written goes to a waste, well, unless you find someway to recycle your thoughts.
This is what’s regularly happening to me for the past I-don’t-know-how-many-months. The connection between my brain and hands is completely compromised. My hand would be flaccid, and my brain would drown in words. The outflow of ideas from my brain to my hand or hands to the paper or computer is obstructed.
As I write this, I’m actually feeling afraid that I may suddenly stop writing it. LOL. You’ll never know when the bug that every single writer avoids would bite. But the probability of that is very small because I’ve got so many experiences of getting frustrated due to writing to write.
Before I start to write, when I conceive the idea of writing an essay or whatnot, everything seems to be organized in my head. I practice writing in my brain — it’s my blank slate where I write my thoughts. But when I actually start writing, I always find myself rewriting sentences over and over again (perhaps because the sentence that I wrote was a deadend) until I stop because rewriting, rewriting, and rewriting starts to get to my nerves. Ah, writer’s block, what a sweet bliss.
While I was trying to catch my sleep on the first day of the year, I told myself that I have to write something. I badly wanted to write, but I’m really tired of wasting my energy and time in producing half-finished essays, or worse quarter-finished ones. I wanted a topic that I could talk about for a very long time (so I could avoid stop writing while I’m in the middle of it). Then an idea came to my mind. Aha! Why not write about getting frustrated with writing? For the very first time in months, I was able to tell myself that my neurons are still functioning. I was spontaneously writing on my brain. I only encountered a few bumps while I was doing the preliminaries in my brain.
But how I wrote this in my brain is very different on how I’m writing it now. I’ve already forgot how I wanted to arrange my thoughts in a way that my readers would understand them. But nevertheless, I’m happy with the outcome of this essay… so far.
Because of this, I want to buy a digital audio recorder, a device that I could bring everywhere, so I could digitally record my thoughts as soon as they enter my brain. You don’t know when your brain would produce electricity and make that bulb inside your brain light. You want to be prepared everytime. I’ve tried using paper and pencil; I would bring writing material with me, just in case a good thought would occur to me while my instructor is busily figuring out how to make his PowerPoint presentation appear in the LCD projector. But it’s not a foolproof method: while I’m trying to write my idea, I would actually forget what I was supposed to be writing. This usually happens when a lot of ideas accumulate in my brain. Also, the paper that I used would sometimes go missing. And there are also times when writing them on a paper is very inconvenient, like writing while taking a bath. Okay, that’s a stupid example. The point is that, having a digital audio recorder will be helpful to me.
I really enjoy writing and I like sharing my thoughts. It has been an approximately five years ago that I learned to appreciate the business of writing. I think removing this out from my system will be difficult. Writer’s block makes me one step away from fully enjoying writing, but that should not stop me from airing my thoughts. Okay, that’s a very lame conclusion from a lame writer.
Feb 18, 2010 @ 07:23:09
It was almost a week since I told you in Twitter, I believe, that I am going to read this entry.
Writer’s block is a nasty thing. I have a fair share of experience and mine has spanned yearSSS. So writing, which used to be both a necessity and a habit, just like breathing, became this very tall, resilient barrier that I had to overcome. Several weeks into my Operation: Muse Revival, I barely saw any progress – there was little, so little it could be negligible. Hanggang simula lang lagi ako. I am still making efforts though – I write every now and then, despite the possible event of being manslaughtered by an evil thing called Engineering.
Sometimes, I would like think that Writer’s Block is helpful, in a sense that it allows us to reconsider and re-organise our thoughts. Or that maybe Writer’s Block is part of our subconscious, it acts as a switch to prompt us whether a topic is worth writing about or not. However, for me at least, WB will continue being a pain I would have to overcome soon.
Come to think of it, I think my Reading Block (if such a term exists) is far worse than my Writer’s Block. I have managed to buy about 15 books (mostly secondhand, there are loads of secondhand books here in the UK) all of which are left untouched. I have started reading The Boy in Stryped Pajamas, but then ended up forgetting that I am reading it at page 114. Sad, I know.
I want a digital recorder as well. I use my mobile phone during dark times, but the sound quality is bad, I can only understand half of what I originally said. I mostly use my moleskine to jot down my thoughts on impulse and the funny thing is, it works.
You know, if I didn’t have a previous experience of losing a Moleskine I sent to a friend (back in the Philippines) through mail, I would be delighted to send you one.
Also, I am running out of things to say. It’s also true that I can be quite annoying considering I jump from one topic to the other. But oh well, practice makes perfect. Oops. I guess?
P.S. Excuse the typos and grammar. I am being extremely lazy today.