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Wednesday, September 07, 2016

Editorial: Working Hard; Achieving Nothing: Writing, Working Procraticnation, and Feeling Inhibited by One's Own Limitations.

   It's amazing to feel so busy when you also feel like you're not doing enough. This tends to be the trends of writing: you are psychosomatically psyching yourself up, while brandishing utmost limits of your talents, then feeling unaccomplished when it's all for nought. Writers are a scarce bunch of procrastinators, while also being the most hard-headed, fast-working, and nail bitingly erratic all-nighter workers out there. We are the unequivocal juxtaposed surreptious oxymoronic cretins to clamber this world. We drink too much tea, have too many bags under our eyes, and occasionally have one-too-many thoughts of jamming a pencil into someone's neck...graphite of course, not lead, we're not sadists....but we reign as self-a suing masochists. 
    Lately I've been wanting to avoid my blog...yet I never do, it is a sickness in me to not want to write, then in invariably deposing my own procraticnation with a thesis on cat behavior. The trouble is, I want to be a professional writer, meaning I want to jinx myself into being a self-hating sociopathic person with horn-rimmed glasses that has long, thought-provoking conversations with his cat, and a library of untouched books larger than my studio apartment. Note, they're unread because I'm too snobbish to touch them with clammy fingers, which comes from the constant stress of deadlines. 
    I feel like I've become some content-generating machine, and that's neighter good, nor bad, just the  observer in me realizing I've been stressing over nothing more than a need to finish typing what I start. I drive myself batty sometimes, as I sip freezing cold Earl Grey, a reminder to make more tea and actually DRINK it while I type. I need to get more eventually, I love Earl Grey; it's lapare rly my favorite of teas, and gives me my caffiene we'd superpowers of snarky remarks, embellished ideas, and confused headaches that come from staring fifteen hours straight at a screen. 
    I get into what is universally known as "the zone" when I'm furiously typing away on a computer, tablet, or even if I'm penning down notes in an old-fashioned composition notebook. Ideas usually flow freely, even when they don't, they tend to come out like they've been run off a convyor belt covered in rhinestones. A bit bumpy and scratchy around the edges, but regardless, they come out clean. 
   You want to know my ultimate sin though? I don't read nearly as much anymore, and thwt makes me die inside every single time...but I need to also learn to write what I want, and read when I can. Sure I can listen to audiobooks, but that feels like cheating, and makes it easier to multitask, when focus is the key. If I can "read" a book and do fifteen other things, then I'm not reading, I'm just listening to a lecture that I've zoned out on fifteen minutes ago. 
   Ideas though, they require a muse, and I've spoken of this muse many times before, but what feeds him (or her) to inspire you? Books tend to be the answer, and yes, even film and games can be artistic expressions that are equivalent to books, especially modern trite that fills me with rage. Agitation seems to be a firebrand of inspiration for many to tattle out a tome of treacherous fury, it allows for spite and spittle to fly across pages, and this comes from all sources of inspiration, especially when there are  early a dozen Kardashians to fume about. 
     Stupidity is the insipid solipsism which drives those who are intellectually sound to drive fear in the minds of the dim, and spark incandescence of thought and theory. Yet, I feel dull, dumbfounded by my own procrastination, my own lacking in imagination, words escape in distress from my hallowed out melon, raided by the robotics of weekly tirades. I love to post new short stories weekly, I love to write this editorials, but I feel I've not grown any more as a writer than I had been...perhaps a wall has been hit? Perhaps I'm not going to surpass my own limits...that is terrifying. 
     Still, fiction is my homestead, poetry my summer home, and nonfiction is but a vacation of which I seldom travel, but feel rewarded and relaxed whenever I traverse the open seas of prose to reach its landing. My internal war is always fought in the battlefield off englightnment, and fool-heartedness. A struggle of the dual soul, the writer, and the artist. Am I either? Will I ever be anything greater than my word, or more honestly; will my word ever be greater than I? I'm blue about my choices, and we all have thwt feeling of resetting time, and getting thwt do-over...but youth is scarce, barely a thimble in the bucket of life, and we have but to measure our time to change within it by watching the droplets fall out of the holes. 
      So I take that in mind, and say: I don't have time to procrastinate, no time for writer's block, for every moment my fingers went developing carpal tunnel, is a minute that I'm losing time. We don't realize how short our lives are, until we sit and realize that half of it is getting success, so thwt we can rest on the laurels of our labors...and there is no time to rest beforehand, no time. It to type, to think, to create. Writers have the best job...we create the dimensions that are outside our perceived reality. They come up with characters the rest of us would love to be, lives we can never have, journeys we can never take, and fears of the unknown that don't exist. Options that many people can never choose, lives that wee tough, and shine forth in the words that are printed on bleached trees. 
    I love writing, I love books, I feel there is contemplation in every story, there is a resolution that makes the world seem greater, more balanced, there is always a reason for action, and the reactions are a multitude of thoughts, rhymes and reasons that supersede commonality. Yet, there is always that gruesome feeling, that tart response that sours the tongue, that distinct writing conundrum of doing so much work....and the idle, tantric feeling of doing nothing at all, in that same dreadful moment. Tirelessly procrastinating, digging a ditch that never moves....the time-killing stasis of writing....I love it like the masochist that I am. 

     Thank you for reading the Malacast Editorial, I will have Part 2 of Janey and Jaffe done before the end of the week, and starting next week, I'll begin with the first of the last ten SSWkly posts, which will end on October 31st, Halloween day. I will be taking a break from writing, as I'll be participating in NaNoWriMo, and I'll be only doing about 1 post a week for October, as that is my planning month for NaNoWriMo. I'm actually very excited to be writing my tenth book (so-far I've written eight full-length novels, and 1 novelette.) and yes, I will perhaps be doing another day-by-day journal, as I've scratched it last year, it depends on how I feel, and if it will be worth posting in December. Despite how I feel, there will be little-to-no writing the month of November, as I'll be offline, and typing up a storm at home. 
      I'll post a bit in December, although I will return after the observances and holiday season is over to do more writing for the blog. I'll likely read a bit during the holiday season, so I may do some book reviews, but if not, I'll just read for my own enjoyment. January is eerily close, and I'm quite upset by that, because 2016 is going too fast. I'll be nearing 400 posts by then, which means only 266 more posts until I end the Malacast Editorial. I hope to have the Divine out before/by December on Amazon. If not, early 2017. A book will never be perfect, but I'll have it out eventually, because I want people to read it, and I think it'll be unique to what others have written, especially from what we've seen in trends the past ten years. I don't want to follow trends, I want to set them, but I'm. It ashamed to admit I have my influences..we all do, it's subconscious, and art is always more prevalent in the sleeping mind, than the thought-riddled cacophony of the thinking brain.  
      I'll replace the SSWkly posts with something fun, perhaps I'll return to Backwards Comparability, or interviews, I'm not sure just yet. The last post of the year will be in-around early December, and I'll have more details by then. For now, I'll just leave you with my twitter handle, and thank you all once again for supporting this blog. 

     Twitter.com/mcasteditorial, message @mcasditorial

     Again, Janey and Jaffe Part 2 will be up later this week, mostly likely Friday. Please come back for more information/updates on the blog. I never did get my newsletter up-and-running, but twitter is my best bet for updating information on the blog itself. Have a great week everyone! 
      

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