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About 6 years ago, I started working on my house. I doubled the size of it, actually, raised the roof, ran the plumbing, heating, drywall, framing… you name it, I did it. It took 2 years, and I finished. It’s not totally done, I suppose. There are a few things here and there that could use a bit more work, mostly odd bits of trim. When I started, the largest project I’d ever worked on was a very big Lego set. I had no training or experience in any aspect of construction – I work at a desk, but I did it anyway. I made a plan, spent countless hours on research, and jumped in with both feet (it was very much like jumping into a large body of water, actually. It rained all summer and on one particularly memorable occasion, I was telephoned to be notified it was raining in the bedroom)

I like to think of it as being too stupid to know when I couldn’t do something, so I did. There were a lot of stupid parts to it. Lots of mistakes and mis-measurements, but I got it all sorted out in the end. This is basically how I feel about writing. I’m not a professional, lots of mistakes and revisions have occurred and it’s nowhere near as good as I want it yet. However, I’ve been cracking away on and off for a long time (because I’m also too stupid to give up, even after an extensive tantrum stating: ‘I give up, I’m too stupid for this nonsense’), and I see now that I can finish this story. I’m realistic though, it will probably never be published, most aspiring writers aren’t, but I will have finished, and that will be one more thing that I can tell myself: “I did that.”

I didn’t know I couldn’t

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Wasting time

Why do I waste precious writing time on this blog instead of writing? Well, first off, I’m procrastinating. It’s one of the things I do when I’m a bit distracted and also have to solve a particularly challenging problem. Another part of it is the rubber-ducking aspect of it. When I blog about a particular issue I’m trying to sort out, I’m forcing myself to collect all of my thoughts on an issue and write them down in a setting where scribbling half-assed notes isn’t acceptable. In doing this, the solutions I’m making for myself have to be justified, and clearly thought through. It might be, I come up with very wrong solutions, but it’s better than what I had been doing. The last thing I feel like I’m accomplishing is writing practice. It might not be creative, nor does it help with the larger writing issues of plot, setting and characters or anything, but putting thoughts down in a blog is a way for me to try and improve the basic mechanics of my writing.