the_red_shoes on editing (the external rather than the internal sort)

kijjohnson on writerly self-sabotage ("If I only had the perfect desk--")

the_red_shoes on kijjohnson on writerly self-sabotage.

Actually, what they're talking about is not so much writerly self-sabotage (that would be my term, and it's a little broad for the topic at hand) as what John Varley (In his esssay/joke/short story "The Unprocessed Word") calls Type A and Type B writers. Type A writers will starve to death or possibly die of a deep-vein thrombosis because they forget to get out of their chairs for weeks on end while writing. (I'm a Type A). Type Bs, in which group Varley classes himself, would rather do anything except write, or they need certain specific situations in which to write.

In an odd connection of username to reality, writing, for me, can be a little like the red shoes. (Cue Kate Bush). Sometimes I can't stop even when I should. (Although I'm training myself to be better about that.) I was in a similar situation to redredshoes about two and a half years ago, and when I was all-but-laid-off-from-my-previously-full-time-job, I moped around the house for about a month and then I got so incredibly bored that I started writing obsessively. Every second that I wasn't actively involved in doing something else.

That ain't healthy either.

The corrective process is the same for both of us, I think. Set rules, set limits, and stick to them.