Bad habits die hard, and keep coming back to life
Already falling on bad habits of not writing.
I’ve allowed myself to completely rest during the month of December. I was quite worn out from NaNo, and besides wanting to recover my energies, I wanted my mind to wander freely for a while, to allow myself to think of something new that I could write, and my mind was still to set on the same story I attempted three times during NaNo.
But December ended and January started, and I haven’t touched the keyboard (to write) or a notebook for a week. Yes, the new year started just like the old.
So yesterday I picked up one of the empty notebooks I have, and a pencil, and I started writing. I can’t remember, for the life of me, when was the last time I used a pencil for writing. I definably used for drawing time and again, but for writing, I don’t know, maybe since high school? Half a lifetime ago or close enough to not matter?
And yes, with a pencil, I also picked up an eraser. Going quite on the opposite hand of how I have been writing for a long time now: focus on writing, leaving editing for later. So any time I misspell a word, think of a better one, I do stop writing, erase my mistake and then I keep going. Even whole sentences suffer its might. But if the target of the eraser wrath is more than a couple of words, I chose to just make a mark at the beginning and end of the ‘deleted’ part, a line works fine.
One shall be forgiven to think that stopping to erase small mistakes would be detrimental to the writing, but I’m finding it has quite the opposite effect, it improves. And I know why.
For the same reason I find writing with a nib/dip pen so rewarding. With a nib pen, I’m forced to constantly stop, every so often. I can write just so many words before the ink runs dry, and those few seconds I’m not writing, are enough for my mind to wander a little ahead, to look back on what I wrote and decide for better words to follow.
It is the same thing really, every time I stop to correct some mistake, every time I put the pencil aside, pick up the eraser and do the opposite of writing, I’m thinking of what I’ll be writing next, and as a whole, the product feels better. Plus is a rest to the fingers. Nib pen you just hold and slide over the paper, ordinary pens and pencil, you do need to put some pressure on it, however little it is.
Now, for what I ended choosing to write, here is the other funny thing, I’m restarting the very same project I attempted three times already. But this time I’m going with a very different perspective on the things. Gone is the oppressive Cyberpunk-ish feel of the original idea.
The towering skyscrapers blocking the setting sun no longer feel like the bars of a prison with no doors out. But like the trees of a magical forest that burst to life with colourful lights once the sun sets and the night takes over.
I don’t know how far I’ll get, if anything, this new perspective on the setting makes it much harder to make the original plot work. But who knows what the one can find in an enchanted forest, maybe treasures, maybe nothing but an adventure, and that would be a great finding indeed.