writing

Starting earlier today, I'm participating in Reverb 10's month of reflection.

writing. what do you do each day that doesn't contribute to your writing, and can you eliminate it?

Eesh. I do so many things every day that don't contribute to my writing - in the past four months, my writing has slowly and surely shut down to nothingness. I haven't sat down to write a piece of fiction in possibly over a year, with maybe one exception that I just now thought of. I love writing, I really do. But for me, when I write fiction, it takes all of me, and that means I'm mentally separate from other things that I should probably think about (like, in the past several months, classes). Of course, I have tried to keep up my blog as an exercise for me and as an incentive to keep me writing something, anything. Has it worked? Sorta. I also started and completed one journal for the summer/beginning of fall, and since then my journaling has gone way down the tube even though I have lots of fascinating things that not only do I want to remember, but I want to write them down just for the sake of writing them down.

But that's not answering the question; the question was what keeps me from writing. Well, you know, life. I go to school, I commute (which takes about 3 hours each day), I have homework and sleep and, probably the only thing I can cut out, really, is the internet. At the same time, in order to write anything proper, I need to be in my own atmosphere, my own zone that I haven't been in for a while just because of the demands of school and life in general. I don't know how long it will take me to find, all over again, that place where my characters live. Can I do it? Yeah. The question, really, is will I keep myself away from the quick-and-easy instant gratification of the internet and let myself just be, just think and explore.

Sounds like a good New Year's Resolution to me.