as long as you come down on the winner's side

[erika]

I've been having conflicting thoughts about trying to update daily for a while now, especially since I signed up for Holidailies.

You may certainly ask "If you're having conflicting thoughts, why sign up for something that says you promise to update every day?" Answer: Everyone else was doing it! Really!

It seems to come down to quality versus quantity, the relevant arguments of which can be summed up as so:

• update sporadically, but when "inspired"—that feeling of guidance and of a higher purpose.


• update every day, with or without that pansy "inspiration" which is just a word that people who are not really writers use to excuse being lazy and not trying.

For example, take Nanowrimo. Now, if I am going for quality, I am very definitely anti-writing 50k in a month—come on! That's ridiculous.* But if I am going for quantity, 50k is genius! I should be doing that much every week!

So after a small amount of consideration (because I am getting sleepy) I think perhaps the problem is not so much quality versus quantity, it is quality in a certain amount of quantity.

In other words: I could write genius Oscar Wilde / Dorothy Parker type quips and anagrams, but if they're buried beneath a hundred pages of unreadable crap, then I'm just Dave Eggers.

Nobody would read my journal if I only updated every week (which is about how often I really feel inspired, and lately not even that much) but at the same time, posting every day just to, well, Post Every Day seems impossible for me to do.

I'll keep trying to find that fucking elusive balance. Meantime, doesn't it always seem like the solution to being adult is to find the middle ground and compromise? (Occasionally losing all moral integrity in the process?) How boring: I still equate compromise with waffling. Pick a side and stick to it, damnit. Next entry I write will probably be "Bisexuality! The Best Compromise You'll Ever Make; Why You Should Not Fear The Dick/Snatch" or "Have Your Girl and Fuck Someone Else Too; Cheating isn't Cheating Unless You Get Caught".

* Participating in Nanowrimo under the Inspiration Model is especially ridiculous when, like this year, I don't (didn't) have a plot. Now there's a Nano that has no chance of being "won"—there's already a "No Plot, No Problem" (lies! No plot, BIG problem!) so I'm fresh out of meta "writing about how I have nothing to write about" ideas. Except for the entry that I am currently, right now, writing. But no way could I have made a novel out of this. Except by rambling on, as I'm doing right now. Though I don't think I could have done that for 50,000 words.

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Major snow today; kiddies got a day off from school and my interview for a depression study was postponed for the third time. (I am definitely not the only flake in the world.)

Comments

[octarine.livejournal.com]

"I could write genius Oscar Wilde / Dorothy Parker type quips and anagrams, but if they're buried beneath a hundred pages of unreadable crap, then I'm just Dave Eggers."

Wordy McWordenstein.

[frankcross.livejournal.com]

I used to sit around and wait to write until I felt inspired, and then I didn't write anything for months. But I've realized that most of my best writing starts out completely uninspired and then just sort of gets carried away somehow.