“The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one’s life and discover one’s usefulness.” – John Cheever
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London
Lord Ganesh, patron of scribes
This blogpost, Writing Habits, discusses the way some writers can force inspiration while others wait for it.
I wonder if these habits correspond to the homework habit one had as a child. Some kid’s parents had them go to their room for homework during the same hours each day while some of us worked in study halls, restaurants, or in a noisy living room.
I find I work best with some noise. I write blog posts in cafes and papers with movies as background, I wrote my BA thesis while “watching” Lord of the Rings on repeat about 12 times, and my most recent paper with Holst, The Planets as background.
I am amazed at the way memory works, or doesn’t as the case may be. I had a demonstration of how mine works today while I was driving to Weaving Works to pick up a part for my loom. A tune started up on the radio and I quickly recognized the Sorcerer’s Apprentice but then couldn’t remember who the composer was. I was pretty annoyed with myself since this is a pretty distinctive piece of music and an image of a Cardassian from Deep Space 9 kind of appeared in my head. Well, the first thing I thought was ‘no, it isn’t Alaimo‘, the actors name, but then thought, ‘Ah, the character is Gul Ducat and the composer, Paul Dukas.’
I gave thanks to Hermes and just sat amazed at how this stuff all just floats around on the old internal hard drive and surfaces when there is a connection to be made to some other piece of information, like the way I got an image that was actually a representation of sound, whew. I’ve spent the evening watching this clip from Fantasia and chuckling to myself about a Cardassian composing it. >^..^<
