"Agony-writing"

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I just love it when my fingers dance around my netbook's keyboard as if I was playing the piano and paying more attention to how the ivory keys feel instead of whether they gave me the right note or not. Which happens, like, 90 percent of the time I try to write. I often misspell words and often I have to prod the Backspace key many times before I could start over with remembering the poor sentence that just flew out of my head midway in the process. When people come into my room, they complain either of two things, or of two things at the same time: either music in silence playing silently loud, or my typing’s trying to do a loud, clicking karaoke improved gangnam style.

It’s crazy, and I’m thinking maybe this is the only reason I got myself into the whole writing process. Maybe I’m just giving myself a reason to tap the keyboards more often. Either its a medical abstract or any random abstracts without a definite ending.

I’m a frustrated pianist/musician. In my brother’s miniature studio apartment I tried joining his band’s sessions by jumping at the percussionist’s gracious offer to take his place in the African drums.(LOL) The song, more than half of the time, would mercilessly get butchered by my off timing and my half-hearted tap (which is caused more by my self-consciousness to the other people in the room than anything else). And most of the time, I’ll just try finishing the song doing a controlled beat that sounds so labored, calculated and mathematical that I’m often better off clapping my palms red and counting the chocolate bars i binged during the entire session.

But that’s not the point. Sometimes I’m just wondering whether I should just drop this whole writing shctick altogether. Just this evening, I tried to try finishing a work on a commissioned article for WHO on alternative chemotherapy. It took me three hours to finish the article. And an hour to do the mathematical equations in structural components. Pretty cool for a newbie like me in the industry(really?). That i suppose. I was given 30 days prior about this duty and i just started it 3 days before the deadline! And newbie is just a dream after all. I used to be a writer in my Primary School organ and got pretty grades in liberal writing. And here i am dumbfounded and getting wreckless with a task i almost get to sleep with almost half of my lifetime.

The outline came in easily enough, but the gap between writing the outline, the transcription, note-skimming (I love transcribing taped interviews as much as I love doing History-taking and Physical exams.), and the actual writing itself (I call that the writing lump. Not exactly a lump in my case, more like a goiter) was so wide and far in between that it’s often torture alone to watch me do it, much more to experience. This has happened before, many many times before. And even if I know I can do everything in an hour if someone stuck a knife to my throat, still. It still takes a knife to my throat for me to make any form of clockwork headway.

Although I often attribute this to what Anne Quidlen calls her “agony writing” , I often wonder whether I’ve taken it too far. I always had to have the right music. I always had to drink some pure concentrated caffeine. I always had to watch at least three hours of trash TV beforehand. I always had to write really late at night, when it’s quiet and everybody’s asleep or less prone to making irritating sounds and moves to disturb me. And I always had to reverse my body clock (Read: I have to sleep through the day), judging my output to how much I call my mom to ask her momly approvals before I junk myself off to sleep. I had to go these pretentious lengths – under the imaginary assurance that these will help me yank out a good story – that it just sucks. And in those times of frustration, I dance around the idea of giving up. Sometimes I do; I just default altogether.

It’s so frustrating, that sometimes I’m wondering if I’m just a poser in the midst of all this. Amidst all my ordeals, my consultants, friends and groupmmates still trust my whole writing idea. Not to mention, their motive of getting out of the responsiblity, i assume is a very good excuse! (haha).

Years back, I’ve consulted some of my best critiques (“really really close friends” in MUTTspiks5lang, my blog of five years which i lost hold of during medschoo) about this. Some say I’m holding back, that maybe, I’m not really letting go when I write. Another holds that, maybe, the process of organized writing could hold meaning to my mind as what a saddle could mean to a wild horse. That I’m so caught up in giving my pieces cadence that I end up depriving it of any. Still, another possibility could be that maybe, I’m just born this way. I just don’t write fast enough. Deal with it. But maybe, it could be that I’m having such unreasonable expectations of how my final drafts should look and sound like that I tend to see the entire writing experience as daunting instead of exciting. Like constipation to diarrhea, I suppose.

It’s not like I suddenly slowed down. I’ve personally taken pride in myself giving every story I write much thought before anyone else sees it, sometimes to the point of risking a butchered deadline. But the chronic-ness of the whole situation makes me question the normalcy of it. Do I really have the heart for this? When I do art direction, when I style myself , it’s always adrenaline rush. When I do staccato-structured scripts for Psychiatry wad visits, the whole process just slides right through me. It’s a different story with writing. Sometimes I have to yank myself, turn myself inside out, or spearhead a vendetta against myself for something good (or acceptable, at the very least) to come out of it. Moreso, does my medically inclined world shifted my brains direction which explains my Global Amnesia of my previous habitus as a writer?

In case you’re wondering, when i write, these didnt take half a day to make, or three mugs of coffee. I am writing this while I took a self-declared break off writing my commissioned story. I gave myself one hour for this, and I didn’t fall behind schedule. Maybe because I won’t get scolded for having the outline of wayward pick-up sticks in this one? i just love to write when i am IN THE RIGHT EMOTIONS. Without emotions, im just one of the crowd, literally. Like the crowd of kids just wanting to ride a bicycle and lick lollipops.

Right now, it’s really my family, my convictions and everyone I care about who’s making me push myself a little more, allow myself those little vendettas and the occasional knives to the throat. I want to create my own, I want to give justice to everyone who believes in me like you don’t want to fail anybody who believes in you, I want to give several directions that just lead into one road, I will have to work with what. I have to do that. Not that I can’t do anything about it. I’m thinking right now, of course I’ll work on my productivity. I’ll have to feed myself on my own eventually. There’s really no excuse out of it. But maybe, I’ve been craving the feeling all this time, it’s just that I’ve been keeping it as a secret from myself for so long. Maybe the feeling’s great after all, especially the climax, everytime I write my last sentence before hitting Ctrl+S.

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Recent Comments

18

There are many who write but few have the ability that you do. Keep up the great work!

There are people who can write well in a grammatical and technical sense...and there are people who can tell a darned good story. Some lucky people can do both but most of us are compromised somewhere along the line. What is that saying again? Oh yes, 'success is ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration'. You may be more normal than you think? :)

I once edited a PhD for my psychologist friend. I love psychology but this was all about data analysis, research and interpretation of findings etc. I'm sure you know exactly how it is. I nearly died of boredom and procrastinated in as many ways as I could before settling down to the task. It took me two or three weeks, during which I would begin working on it at around 11.00pm and finish around 3.00 or 4.00am...then sleep till nearly midday. It was the only way I could cope with it, so I just went with the flow.

Other writing, however, especially of the creative or conversational kind...or if it's an educative piece about something I'm passionate about - well, that's when my fingers clatter madly across the keyboard - like they are now.

The one thing I want you to take from this comment of mine though, is that I find you an incredibly engaging writer. Your personality shines through...your metaphors are brilliant...you train of thought always slightly off-beat and insightful. You are already a writer. It's in your blood...

Best advice? Just start writing...anywhere...in the middle of a thought or at the end...it doesn't matter. Virtually all novelists scrap the first few paragraphs or pages, and sometimes whole opening chapters. We use those laborious beginnings as warm-up exercises, just like we do before we run a marathon. When your story is ready to take off, it will do so without you hardly noticing. You can go back and reread/edit later, and the point where you story really begins will become clear to you naturally. Simply cut everything above that point and keep going.

As for technical/scientific/medical writing? I expect you and I may be destined to burn the midnight oil and turn our sleep-wake cycles upside down for the rest of our lives. :)

Hi Jiran, I believe that we all have a story in us and we all have experiences where we can help one another, the world is always on rush hour and I think we should all slow down and savour what we have and marvel at how far we have come as a species

I believe in you, Jiran, don't give up writing, you can write pretty well,:)

Don't quit writing!!!!!!!!

For all my friends who believes in me.. I wont =)) Thank you so much!

Hi jiran I am a musician also I play the Congress and bongos most all percussion instruments I am from the Bahamas so I play a West Indian style of music like a Calypso beat or a merengue beat and also reggae. The West Indian style music is my favorite type of music. This Is Our Our
New Group Were Called Soldiers Of The Cross. I just add a little of Caribbean style to his type of music here in Jacksonville Florida. Mel is our awesome lead vocalist and rhythm guitar player. Mel has over 100 great songs I don't know how he could remember all of them. God is surely using him in our praise and worship group. Here is a link where I am playing at a coffeehouse with my group check it out.

https://myspace.com/newlifecoffeehouse/video/mel-don-and-ace/22267207

You said that this happens, to you like, 90 percent of the time you try to write. You often misspell words. I have it worst in you I cannot read all right when I was a kid I got lead poisoning and this causes your mind to not be able to retain words. But I never let it stop me I ended up getting some software called the Dragon to put in my computer. It does all my writing for me. I am still training my computer to get used to my voice commands. If you do a lot of writing the Dragon is the way to go. As fast as you can think of the words and save them the Dragon will print it down for you and it doesn't matter how hard the word is to spell it will print it out when it learns your voice commands. They advertise the Dragon on TV sometime but I'm quite sure that you can go online and order it. I got the software for $45 it was on sale. I hope this can help you a lot of writers use this software today. Anyway God bless with your writing. PS here is the link to some island music that you can practice to it can help you with your drum playing.

http://www.1952albert.com/bahamasmyhometown.htm

This is my other website

Hey Albert! Coo! You love music as well! I do play guitar but I really dont have the innate skills to hit things with beat. lol! Thank you so much for your help regarding the app! I think i am going to try that one! Thank you for your support buddy! I really appreciate it!

Considering you said you had difficulty writing I cannot see anything wrong with how you have written this blog. When you have to do a structured piece it is always more difficult to formulate the text. But writing freestyle can come easier.

As Judy-B says try not to think too much about what you are writing. Get it all down and then edit. If you feel you write too slow because you have too many ideas coming into your head at once. There should be a way of switching on the recording part of your computer program so that you can just talk and then edit the work after.

Lis.

Hello ma'am! Thank you so much for always inspiring me! Like I said, if my friends believes in me, then I dont have any reasons not to believe in my end... thank you so much!

You are welcome. You have already developed a good following of friends here. Just keep going. It can also be good therapy :)

Lis.

I like your writing. My suggestion would be, when you are writing, just write, don't let the critic in until it's time to edit. Then you can make the corrections etc. But it's most important to get those thoughts out before they "fly out of your head". Keep writing. :)

Hi Judy! People like you are the essence of my pieces! I wont quit writing in behalf to all of you who believes in me.. =))

That is so good to hear. :)

There won't be too many people who don't feel some of this at times. You might have already tried this, but if not try working on Word and using your automatic spell correction tool. This is good for the words like the (teh), and (nad or adn) etc. It doens't sound like much but helps save some of the time spent in fixing them. You can also put in words you use commonly with a special abreviation (make sure it isn't another actual word) especially specialised words such as medical words. As soon as you type the abreviation the full word will pop up. I used this method a lot when employed, especially for the company and government department names.

Mum Helen, as always you are very helpful =)) Your so cool =))

I enjoyed reading this. I like your style of writing! keep-up !

Really? Wow...that feels so good.. =)) thank you so much..Ill write for you guys who never stops believing..

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