I write new posts once a week, Gentle Reader. That gives me one week to write a few hundred words – which is hardly the most burdensome task in the world. It’s only one of the many items on the to-do list of my life –
(goes to gym)
-but in all honesty, thinking up a topic and sitting down to write intelligently about it doesn’t require anything except uninterrupted focus. So as long as I can find the time –
(goes to work)
-to think properly, to reason out an argument, and type it out, I’m fine. And this is true of all writing, isn’t it? As long I have a stretch of time where I don’t have any other responsibilities –
(prepares and hosts Tuesdays at Nine reading series)
-I’m good to go. The trick for anyone, of course, is to find that stretch of time, and to make sure that it’s free of distractions, used efficiently –
(travels an hour and a half by subway for a two minute audition)
-and productive. Productivity is key, after all; there’s nothing more demoralizing than spending time on a given task and not having some material thing to show for it –
(spends half an hour in failed effort to get into friend’s sold-out show)
-since that allows doubt to start creeping in, making you think that your creative efforts are pointless, and not leading to anything. As long as you create something, you can stave off this sort of doubt. And that just requires sitting down and typing it out. You just need to be certain that no life events come up to distract you for this –
(spends hours in emergency texting session to prepare for next week’s Tuesdays reading)
-and you need to shut out the rest of the world for the amount of time you need to sit down and type –
(binge watches impeachment hearings)
-but if you do that, you can hold your head high, proud of the fact that you’ve made productive use of the limited time you have on this planet –
(vegetates for an hour with Best of Stefon SNL videos on You Tube)
-and have created something you can call your own.
Now, what was I doing again?