Thinking with Therapist (3/x+1)

"What gets in the way of writing like that?" Therapist asked; and so we continued the conversation from earlier.

"Time, mostly," I responded. I think it's less that, though, than timing.

The big glaring issue is accessibility. Samsung is not Blogger-friendly, which means that the two blogs I write on can't be worked on from home - anchoring me to public terminals to keep them updated.

But not all of it, so a breakdown of where my time goes looks like this:

• Processing time. Inspiration isn't exactly a problem. I'm quite capable of finding things to write about; sometimes I'm reacting to other people, others I'm just blogging whatever the hell comes to mind at the moment.
• This is most true on blogs, because my very favoritest du semaine are written to a challengingly high standard. Finding words that don't feel like bathroom graffiti is hard enough to be stimulating.
• This is also true for love letters. I've realized that they are routined to the point of liturgy recently - after I spontaneously wrote that, after a few paragraph breaks, it's now time to sing my beloved's praises again, because after that many paragraph breaks it was - but that still means that I need to figure out how to say what I'm going to.
• Research time. This is, primarily, true for Andalusada. My grasp of world history is shaky and specialized, and I write about lots of things that I know nothing about. (When I started with the Skete of Orsa, for instance, I had no idea that Orsa existed; part of my issue was looking up the geography of Sweden enough to make intelligent-sounding noises.)
• Referencing time. I like things that are underlined and blue, especially when they're both at once. This is moreso on Andalusada, where I spend a lot of time editing things (for instance, changing St. Francis of Assisi's diagnosis from PTSD to Stockholm syndrome), establishing hypertextuality across weeks and months and posts, and a bit of consistency throughout - but it's true everywhere, even here. (Connecting all the links to things can be rather time-consuming itself; I'm writing off the cuff, and usually have no idea what kinds of things are going to need linking where.)
• Wasting time, which falls into two categories:
• Facebook. Let's be honest here. Facebook is my new AIM, a one-stop way to keep in touch with the world. And I kill an enormous amount of time there that could be spent on writing stuff that can be shared.
• Lurking. More than a few blogs I regularly visit never see a comment, because I'm either content with spectatorship or have nothing to contribute to the conversation. Usually I don't visit them to learn much new, but rather to reread things, to re-experience the particular pleasure of words arranged just so on a given page.
• Everything else. There's other stuff too, but those are the glaring ones.

"What could you do to change that?" Therapist asked.

• Isolation. Facebook only interferes with writing time when I have writing time (i.e. during library hours.) Simply limiting my time spent signed on would probably free up more time than I care to admit.
• Lurk and respond after hours. There's no reason that I have to be the first person who responds to posts, and aside from one or two high-traffic blogs where it helps to respond in a timely manner, it's not even necessary
• Research after hours. The Skete of Orsa was very quick writing for something I'd come up with only the night before. This was in no small part because I'd done homework. Pretty much all of my research was done the night before, so when I sat down at the terminal all I had to do was spit out the words and make sure they were spelled correctly. (Alas this did mean going back to Wikipedia, but only because Character Map wasn't accessible from the menu.)

Research, though, means a degree of premeditation, which I've never had before. And that points to a bigger thing:

• Regulate my writing. One of the most satisfying things that I've managed to blog here was the I used to... sequence: writing on a theme across several days. (This series, too, although there was the interruption that came with Sunday being closed and Monday occupied.) The single biggest thing I can do to change my writing style would be to regulate it, to establish a rhythm to it that keeps me coming back and gives me direction.
  
  ...or something like that.

"What do you mean by 'regulate'?" Therapist asked.

And since our time ran out then, and since I'm seeing Therapist tomorrow, this will be continued at such time.