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hmpfHungry, tired, exhausted. Not writing the paper I have to present tomorrow, and which should have been finished, oh, a week ago or so. Haven't e-mailed the prof about it, either, which I should have done, really. But what should I have told her? "Uhm, I'm still not finished, sorry!"?
Hopelessly behind on thesis research. Basically, no chance of getting there by February anymore. Which means another term of paying fees, and another half a year to add to my age when I'm finally ready to join the working population.
Depressed about writing (fic, that is). Yeah, writing-based depression is rare with me, but it still happens, occasionally. I think it's all those end-of-year memes I've been seeing in other people's journals, rarely listing less than a dozen of stories written in 2007. It's painful to be reminded repeatedly of my inability to learn faster. You learn writing by writing, and that means you have to write *lots*. But I'm still not able to write as much as I should, if I really want to improve.
And I really do want to improve. But to write as much as I would need to, I'd have to basically have several hours per day to set aside for writing, and I can't do that. Half an hour per evening or so gets me... three words, maybe a sentence on a good day. It's not enough.
The really sad truth is... I don't actually care much about uni, much of the time. I just want to write. Of course, I usually don't - the guilty conscience is efficient enough to stop me from writing. It's not enough to actually motivate me to work properly for uni, though.
Gah.
I need to eat breat with almond cream now. And possibly some chocolate.
Hopelessly behind on thesis research. Basically, no chance of getting there by February anymore. Which means another term of paying fees, and another half a year to add to my age when I'm finally ready to join the working population.
Depressed about writing (fic, that is). Yeah, writing-based depression is rare with me, but it still happens, occasionally. I think it's all those end-of-year memes I've been seeing in other people's journals, rarely listing less than a dozen of stories written in 2007. It's painful to be reminded repeatedly of my inability to learn faster. You learn writing by writing, and that means you have to write *lots*. But I'm still not able to write as much as I should, if I really want to improve.
And I really do want to improve. But to write as much as I would need to, I'd have to basically have several hours per day to set aside for writing, and I can't do that. Half an hour per evening or so gets me... three words, maybe a sentence on a good day. It's not enough.
The really sad truth is... I don't actually care much about uni, much of the time. I just want to write. Of course, I usually don't - the guilty conscience is efficient enough to stop me from writing. It's not enough to actually motivate me to work properly for uni, though.
Gah.
I need to eat breat with almond cream now. And possibly some chocolate.
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Hey. I sent the chocolate packet a few days ago.
Date: 2008-01-08 01:29 am (UTC)I'm still catching up with my flist; will read your surprisingly large recent fiction output when I'm up to date. It will probably take a few days to read everything, though. Holy dren, you *can* be prolific! :-)
As for my 'extra semester' angst - well, yeah, it's only one semester - but I'm so frelling old already... :-(
And as for writing... I don't know. I just don't know. Today I feel as if I'll never learn to do convincing character voices and dialogue and plot development. I'm so far away from even grasping the *first* things about these very central elements of fiction writing... and making no visible progress at all. Granted, that's probably due to my exceedingly slow writing process - but in the final account it doesn't matter whether it's because of a lack of speed or a lack of talent - the end result is still a lack of achievement. (Jeez, I feel like that's the beginnings of midlife crisis. It's a *bit* early, isn't it??)
The main thing that scares me is dialogue, I think. I feel like I may learn to deal with plot, but dialogue... I'm just not sure I have it in me.
Of course, it *is* possible to write good fiction without actually being able to write particularly good dialogue - not all fiction is heavy on dialogue, after all. In fact, very few of my favourite 'literary' authors are particularly strong at writing dialogue. I was always more fond of vivid atmosphere and so on, which, I guess, partly explains why I never really learned to do dialogue etc. Most of what I read simply didn't contain much of it.
So, I'm not so much afraid that I'll never write My Big Novel as I'm afraid that I'll never manage to write My Big LoM or FS Fanfic (because in these, dialogue is crucial).
Of course, it's probably extra difficult for me to write dialogue because of the non-native-speaker thing. Dialogue is the one thing I really don't have a native speaker's 'feel' for yet. But this factor is less important than one might think - I suck at German dialogue, too. It just seems to be a form of writing that I really don't have a talent for.
**
That almond stuff is the perfect comfort food, though. It's like peanut butter, only better - sweet, but not too sweet, and not so sticky. (And, unlike peanut butter, it's prohibitively expensive. But I need my comfort food - especially in winter.) It's easily the best thing I ever found in an organic food store.