It makes me sound like I’m avoiding it and partially I am.
But for me a lot of writing is not-writing.
@HopFrog, FORAGER
I’m playing FORAGER right now and it’s classically addictive.
Trees and stones and hot peppers and faeries are cropping up, there are forges to forge and skills to unlock. The world expands square by square and the bigger it gets, the messier--the more complex, the more possible. I’m reading it like a metaphor for life, but more interesting it’s a metaphor for not-writing. All my not-writing time is me foraging, collecting (sometimes useless) shit, and in spare moments when I’m not clearing land or running from bulls or starving to death, I make.
I make a sentence and then I make another sentence.
I make them so they go together.
I hit enter a lot.
I use a little plus sign to break apart the sections, and each section is a little like a footstep, or like a call for an ingredient, and I like that writing is combining, processing, the application of heat, that you can feel it when a story really gets cooking.
For me, making is only possible because of the foraging. The 8 hour workday. The weird glass-breaking joy of singing loudly in the car, windows down in the dark. The broken dishwasher and the dream of repairmen. Playing FORAGER. Feeling my throat burn. Listening to it rain. Googling “how to tell if a ghost is haunting your house.”
I find value in not-writing.
I like that when I do make, I carry all this shit in my pack.
That I get to forge.