Why is writing fun?

When Jacques Derrida died I was called by a reporter who wanted know what would succeed high theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the center of intellectual energy in the academy. I answered like a shot: religion.

Precisely. Also, I am kicking myself for having spent my time in undergraduate philosophy courses reading aesthetics and "high theory" when I should have been reading Machiavelli and Strauss and such. Foucault was worth the time, though, he's as handy as the jar of crushed red pepper I use for cooking just about anything.

tonight only?

ah no, for the rest of my life. you run hard and you spit. that's what you do when you breathe the words.

i guess the REAL trick is turning that into a sea i can sail a ship on... something you would all be pleased to spend an afternoon... cause dude, it's plegm.

loogie bay. you never see that on a t-shirt with a silhouette sunset and sea gulls.

some folks run for the olympics and some folks run peck peck peck around the block every day.

you know, i could pull the mint out... or turn myself into neptune... then i'd spit salt water and sardines would take photos in front of me in my sleep.

ah, but my complexion is not nearly green enough i would imagine.

i suppose that's why i like plays, because there's always those colored filters you can pull over a spot light... and then i could be as aqua as i wanna be.

[this is one of those posts i will have to scurry away and hide for weeks after i submit it. i fall in the school that believes it's as easy to admit you're a writer as it is to admit you're an alcoholic. embarrassment from the privilege vs. embarassment from taking pride in my thoughts/lunacy/poor technical abilty vs. denial of the burden and addiction. take your pick all you want, but it's a three-or-three-and-a-half-headed beast at my house.

i've enjoyed the posts upthread. peck on, pickled pipin' peckers. er. uh. um.]
m.

i'm not sure i cd distill advice into a list, and watchin remy an paul bite chunks out of each other is partly why: i have bad habits an good ones, and i probably don't know which is which

i magpie from others the whole time

i cannot disguise my writin as someone else's

i have an absurdly low threshold of boredom: i try and make this work for me rather than against me

i have a good memory for anecdotes an unexpected counter-flow items: i think this is worth cultivatin (ie you remember who someone was an what they thought by recallin the story which is the exception to their rule)

"concretised" isn['t a pretty word but it's right in one sense: when your sentence is on the page you can move it round... your writin is made up of little bricks of thought an there are good, better, best orders

as a professional sub-editor i wd say that 40% of what i read wd be better at two-thirds the length (you reorder to effect this), and 40% at one-third

there are not enough published works that are just one sentence long

just by making cold black marks on a blank white page i can reach out far away and fuck w.your hd

one sentence, 69,457 words long.

oh oh oh it's magic!

But then I read them back and realize I have to edit and delete stuff because it's rubbish, and then edit some more, and then a little more, and ...

Using math proof writing as a model for writing papers isn't as bad an idea as it sounds, in my experience. It really forces clarity.

augh

Writing is rewarding when you do it well, but it can only be fun if it incorporates an element of play. This sense of wordplay can and probably should come naturally, but it is often extinguished by the injection of strong ambition, competition for praise, and the imposition of editorial judgments about what is good, better or best. Someone who is under pressure to perform seldom feels that their task is full of fun.

For a shining example of writers having fun, see A thread where you commission a poem from ILE

Analytic writing makes me smile. It is a pleasure to compose sentences.
Creative writing makes me want to impale a fork in my skull.
― 57 7th (calstars), Tuesday, March 1, 2005 3:57 PM (fourteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

Writing is least fun when you've got an audience in mind.

I hear it helps if you imagine they are naked.

Erotica will never be my forte.

Not if you write children's books

xp

What about grotesquerie?

I like it when my pen makes the funny marks on the page. Oh, how it makes me laugh and sing to see the funny marks!

Then nakedness is only one eldritch state of many.

xp

Writing became more fun when I finally incorporated it into my daily routine. Once the initiatory act no longer required intentional effort and just became a thing I did regularly like eating or weeping in despair for a fallen world, I was able to forget about the more mechanical parts of the process and just, like, roll with it, baby.

(This is what makes my contributions to ILX so very, very chefkiss.jpg.)

the only good writing is posting

Pretty much. What did people even read before message borads existed?

Shredded Wheat nutritional panel is only good for maybe 2-3 close readings and then I'm out.

Try the romance copy on the opposite panel. Real tear jerker.

i think twitter has made me a better writer in some way. especially the 140 era (rip). not sure about ilx. my academic writing is strong relative to my peers and i take great pleasure in it; it’s a fun game to try to inject just the right amount of style while maintaining the dry tone and technical correctness

Writing became more fun when I finally incorporated it into my daily routine. Once the initiatory act no longer required intentional effort and just became a thing I did regularly like eating or weeping in despair for a fallen world, I was able to forget about the more mechanical parts of the process and just, like, roll with it, baby.

― Logy Psycho (Old Lunch), Friday, July 12, 2019 2:58 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this is probably the biggest influence of ilx, in terms of writing. reading ive aped all my styles from you guys

Contemporary English's (acquired, not innate) tendency towards dryness and consummate transparency drives me up the wall, although it's a useful corrective when grafted onto other, less cost-effective languages.

I like rite gud

“Writing is like the life of a glacier; one eternal grind” - my man John Muir

Def

Muir's livelihood was grounded in the money he earned from his writing, mostly for periodicals. Hence, the eternal grind.