crafting a response
Even though visual construction metaphors have mostly defined the way I (and lots of other people, possibly you) think (or at least talk, which is about the same thing for me) about writing (the dimensionality of characters, polishing prose, etc.), I think that the kinds of attention required to create a new verbal or visual/physical work have less in common than do the kinds of attention each required within the visual/physical and verbal realms. Designing a new website, sewing my Halloween costume (a bunny), and repairing a broken window fan seem to require fairly similar frames of mind for me, even though one is creative (in the sense of creating a new thing), one is purely technical, and one is problem-solving. However, the new website and a new blog entry need completely different frames of mind, even though they’re both similarly creative activities. A small amount of constant distraction — music, idle conversation, a familiar movie — is often helpful (sometimes necessary) to me with the visual activities, but for the verbal I require no constant distractions (can’t listen to music unless it’s classical of the furniture variety), but sharp, 5-15min breaks in concentration every so often with just enough distraction to cover the surface level of consciousness without requiring any real thought — conversation is too much, but a cigarette is just about perfect.
All of which is a very long-winded way of saying that I think this difficulty of writing vs. prolificity of craft since quitting smoking (or in my case, just in general) may be due to the different patterns of attention involved (especially, as I read through this to change it from a comment to a myownfuckingblog entry, the formal sit-down capital-letters nature of my (attitude toward) Writing vs. the casual just-doing-this-thing ease of dicking around with geometry), and so, if you can sew and can’t write, maybe you should attempt to write like you sew. How to do this remains an important question of course: type with your feet? pay less attention?
And, thinking it through, I wonder if it may have something to do with the outlines all the creative writing professors said I should be using. Start with a pattern?
Filed by shaun at July 18th, 2008 under indifferenthonest