Ryan Mathews wrote:

I am starting to get really depressed here.  Back at Katsucon, two
months ago, I had mentioned at the panel that I was going to write a
TENCHI MUYO! story entitled "Mother's Day", which I hoped to have
done by Mother's Day.

Well, two months have gone by, Mother's Day has come and gone, and I
have written *squat*.  No, scratch that.  I wrote the prologue four
weeks ago, but it's garbage and I can't release it.  Near the end, I
was getting tired, but I was afraid to quit writing for fear I
wouldn't be able to start again any time soon, so I rushed it.

I am having a great deal of trouble finding time to write while
working full-time.  Work takes the best hours of the day from me.
I'd love to write after coming home, but I just don't know how.  I'm
too drained.  In a sense, the problem is that my job is too
interesting.  As a software engineer, I write code and hunt down bugs
all day long.  By the end of the day, I'm all thunk out.  When I sold
shoes, I had problems with being tired, but I still managed to push
out a chapter of something every month.  The job was maddeningly
boring, so I had plenty of time to work through story ideas in my
head.

I'd be curious to know how other people manage to work full-time and
still remain an active fanfic writer.  Or perhaps fanfic writing is
better left to the college kids.  :-(

Ack! no, don't leave it to us! WE don't have the free time either!!

Seriously, I don't TECHNICALLY work full time, but between my part-time
job and school, I literally do NOT have time to write. But that never
stopped me! ;p

Here's a trick: Set aside some time after work to do something you've
been meaning to do (paint the garage, vaccum the carpet, I dunno, be
creative, but make sure it is dull and boring). Make yourself honestly
believe that you are going to actually get it done this time. To help
you, remove all distractions: Disconnect the phone and TV, hide all the
radios (except any that you might use while computing) burn all the
magazines, etc. Now go into the computer room, turn on your machine and
load up your favourite word processor, then load up the fic you've been
working on. Read it over once.

No go to do the chore, making sure to re-enter the computer room from
time to time, every time you have a new idea. It doesn't matter where in
the continuity it shows up, just jot it down.

You will find that these visits become more and more frequent, until
eventually the chore is forgotten, and you are typing away madly,caught
in a creative frenzy. This is an inbuilt defense mechanism humans have
evolved to avoid work. It's called inspiration. This is why you cannot
write after work, because you have made writing into work. You should be
writing to AVOID work!

The Prime Sagittarian,
Alpha Centauri

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