... With all that's going on in Minnesota I don't much feel like writing about anything other than that, but at the same time there's already so much stuff out there and written much more eloquently than I ever could. So for a while I'll try to pretend everything is "normal". Still, please be safe ...

Hey, we're already at post #40 since I started this new "word vomits" series. I keep calling them word vomits, but as someone recently mentioned, these ended up being more than that. I think I take more care with them than perhaps I should. Though that's ok because I enjoy the whole process, even if there are some days (like today) when I would rather do something else.

Specifically, today I got a copy of Cobalt Core (a cozy roguelike deck-builder set in space) that I've been wanting to play since forever (I have a lot to say about my enjoyment of card games, but that will be something for another post)! I also have some ideas for how to follow up the writing practice excerpt I shared in yesterday's entry. I could tell you my ideas, but that would spoil the fun (if I publish them), no?

Something I'm currently wondering is what it would look like if I started writing "stories". For a while I thought that simple word-vomit style would work, but on second thought I realize it might work for "some things": practice snippets, vignettes, or even very short stories. But anything meatier will definitely require more than a single writing session. For example, writing Sacred Labor actually took me around a whole week-three days for writing and ~two for editing.

What I think I'll do is that once I reach 50 posts in this series I'll try to relax things a bit. I will still set myself the goal of writing ~700 words a day of semi-publishable content (i.e. not on my personal journal), but the requirement of publishing every day will be gone (maybe a minimum of twice a week is good?). That should free me up quite a bit to work on other projects or longer pieces. It would also be fun to do a serial at some point.

On this last point, one of my favorite web-stories is The Wandering Inn, which is itself a serial. (holy crap I haven't checked the site in ages and it's super different from what I remember!) I'm not entirely familiar with how it came to be, but my understanding is that the author started writing the story just because, and it eventually evolved into its own huge thing. And you can actually feel it as you read the first chapters; it's clear there wasn't much of a plan. You can even see things that sound "weird", and yet the story works excellently despite them (or maybe even because of them?).

I've always thought that doing something like that would be fun. Just writing stuff that I want to read and sharing it with the world, just because.

...

So yeah... that's just rambling on ideas about my writing future. I hope to stick to it! I find that whenever I'm pressed for time to do something I'm very motivated to do other stuff, but once I get the chance that other stuff just falls through the cracks. When I was writing my master's thesis I would always keep a notebook with me where I would jot down all the things I wanted to do once I was done so as not to get sidetracked from the actual writing I had to do. But once I submitted the thesis and the whole affair was done, I never really got around to any of them. I perhaps started one, but then found myself just binge-watching "Modern Family" and "Avatar: The Last Airbender".

I always keep coming back to this, and if you've been reading the blog for a while then you're probably tired of me talking about it, but it's the idea of why we do what we do. In my mind I equate this with the idea of inspiration (we're inspired to do something and so we do it). There's also the other fascinating counterpart of how much control we actually have over all of this.

It's not easy to make yourself do what you don't feel like doing if, of course, there's no obligation for you to do it in the first place. That's when you truly start to question the whole idea of free will. If my body/subconscious tells me it no longer feels like learning to play the ukulele, then who is making the decision to abandon a previous interest? I often feel that our attentions and likes/dislikes are more like a current that we only slightly influence than something we have full control over.

Frequently, when I sit to write these posts I struggle to get started. A part of me complains, asking why I even make myself do this. Though after a while the feeling goes away as I start to get in the groove and enjoy the act of smashing buttons. Still, it's something that happens most every time, even though I know it's just a small hill that I need to climb over.

I suppose in these situations, like me sitting down to write, is when one is truly exercising their free will. Maybe there's a strong parallel between free will and discipline?