Short Story Block
I have been thinking about what to write today and have many short story ideas in various states. I need a solid day's worth of writing over the weekend where I can knock off at least one short story and feel accomplished. Putting off writing short stories feels like a form of procrastination set in by fear. If I have to put a finger on that fear, it might be the inability to write a little of the short story daily. Maybe I should try Hemmingway's advice "All you have to do is write one true sentence that you know"[1]. Little has new meaning now.
Action bias has been one of those virtues that have served me well in the past month and most certainly to progress my daily writing habit. Writing an experience has been frictionless, and I can summon the forces to concentrate and finish a 500-word post relatively quickly. The challenge has been to create something out of thin air.
I want to experiment with different forms of writing rather than just a log of daily happenings. The urge is real. The disappointment of not doing so is soul-crushing. I think writing this post is a form of procrastination that will let me avoid writing something closer to my heart, creating a fictional world. I didn't realize it was going to be this hard.
Right now, I feel like I am on a golf course and taking a bad swing, and I can hear feedback telling me there is something wrong. I need to introspect to get over the fear to avoid the endless procrastination about experimenting with a new form of writing.
Fear might be a strong word for procrastination or the cause of it. I believe it may be the unknown path you have to tread to create something out of nothing. Deep down, it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when I think about writing short stories, but I am not able to conjure up that energy and push it past a tipping point.
All this thinking made me hungry, and I had to fix myself a snack. That is one other thing I need to optimize and align with my writing routine. One meal a day is incredible. Getting through a typical day with the current diet is not an issue, but I am underestimating the energy needed to write as it involves lot of thinking. As they say, a person uses 320 calories in a typical day to think, with different mental states affecting the brain's energy consumption. I wish to employ this fact in my weight loss journey. I hope it were that simple, but you get the point.
Another optimization on my mind is prioritizing what to read and boosting reading speed. Skimming some business text helps. I need to get better at it. Wish me luck!
"...true sentence..." This has been bothering me since I read about Hemminway's writing habit. I haven't fully understood what a "true sentence" means for a fictional writer. I think this might be an Ethical Appeal by the writer to encourage budding writers. I intend to deep dive to understand the meaning of "true" in Hemmingway's context. I have to learn more about him and his style. Come to think of it, I haven't read Hemmingway's work. ↩︎