Today was full of busy-work: sending of short-story contracts; making a trip to the bank; doing some spot cleaning around the house (a futile effort); booking flights to Adelaide in June; putting together the final touches on a job application; followed by heading off for drinks this evening with the ever-awesome Angela Slatter and the mighty Jason Nahrung, upon which time there was discussion on the matter of writing, not writing, what might be written, not having time to read, procrastination, and other topics which tend to crop up when writer’s gather in one place. All in all, a fine day, albeit not the kind of day from which great blog posts are made; nor, for that matter, the kind of day that results in a satisfied writerly glow of contentment that comes from knowing one has done what’s necessary to produce words and such. Fortunately I felt so lazy after said chat that I came home and had a short burst of work (albeit of the editing, flensing and market-research variety; actual writing comes later).
I keep wanting to do a longer post about the role downtime, busy-work, procrastination and outright laziness play in the creative process, but I find it difficult to conceptualise them in such a way that won’t me sound like a) a complete pillock, or b) someone in need rescuing or reassurance. Thus I set it aside, confident that it will either work itself out later (or that I have nothing really noteworthy to say on the matter).
I am still going to note that going out for drinks seems to have become a very strange experience. I seem to have stopped drinking, socially or otherwise, sometime in my mid-twenties and it always catches me off-guard when I’m suddenly in a bar and ordering something. It seems vaguely wrong to say that I miss the whole process of going out and having a drink, and yet I do. I’m extraordinarily fond of bars, really. Probably due to too much Kerouac and poetry in my twenties…
