Writing

And now I'm going to write about writing.

It's weird the way this works. So many of you probably view writing as work or a chore. Some kind of grueling task assigned by a professor just out to make your life miserable. I understand where you're coming from, because I agree with you. Writing is painful. Ask any writer. Dorothy Parker once said, "I hate writing, I love having written."

I don't know how much I agree with that. There's definitely some writing that feels like pulling teeth, but for the most part I actually really enjoy this. Maybe I'm a masochist.

So what is there to my writing? How much planning do I put into what I put onto paper? Do I sit and think for hours about what I want to write, or does it come naturally?

There's definitely a warmup period every time I write. Hell, most nights I lie in bed thinking, "My God, how am I going to be a successful writer? I can't think of anything I could possibly write about now, so how am I going to think of anything later? Maybe I've had my last valuable thought ever. Maybe nothing will ever come out of my keyboard again." That's because I'm cooled down. All I need to get some serious writing done is to sit down and write whatever. It's sloppy and usually sounds stupid, but it gets my gears turning. It's less like turning the whole car on and more like revving the engine to get the heater working faster on a cold winter's day.

Once that heater's pumping, I just go. I'll definitely do some research beforehand if I'm writing an essay for class, but when I'm writing a blog or a story or poetry (which is rare, but I do it) I just churn out whatever my fingers want to write. I'm hardly even thinking about this right now - my fingers are just doing their thing. If I ever get paid to write, the checks need to be made out to, "Fingers of Brandon Rothfusz."

I actually just got finished writing some sort of short story that I started at about midnight. Well, I'm not sure if it's a short story or the first chapter to something. It just sort of happened. I'm pretty excited to see what I make of it, though. It's probably the first work of fiction I've written that I don't feel horribly embarrassed about. It's weird, but I definitely channeled my style in this one.

When I finished with that, I wrote a poem. Don't know where that came from. Like I said, it's rare for me to write poetry. Grade school kind of killed it for me, so I most often resort to prose. But occasionally, the mood will strike me and I'll pump out a little rhymey-wimey thingy. And no, you don't get to read it.

It's almost 5 in the morning now and I'm getting delirious, but I just can't stop writing. I clearly have some sort of sickness. Hopefully, a sickness that can eventually result in some cash.

I don't plan on working at Target forever. Though, if I do earn enough money writing to make a career out of it, I will be buying a Wave. That thing's fun.