I slept in until 10 AM, which is hard for me, because I'm very sensitive to light, and the morning sun blasts in through my window every day, even when the blinds are pulled. Nevertheless, after working until 12:30 AM this morning, and coming home and forcing myself to stay awake so I could finish the story I was reading in the collected fictions of
Jorge Luis Borges, I was pretty tired.
I worked on the pencil 'n' paper roleplaying game I'm writing. Over 20 noders are helping me playtest it, and their feedback is invaluable. Still, I seem to be having trouble coming up with a good piece of introductory fiction. I either make it too byzantine or too forced. I should have a new version to go out tonight, or possibly tomorrow, which will make me feel better about it, but I'll probably have to go back to the bullet-point background for the time being, just so it won't be the random hodge-podge of half stories that it is right now.
This lead me to think about my recent writing in general, or rather the lack there-of. Ever since I got back from Japan, I've really just stopped writing for pleasure. This might be because I've been very busy these last 18 months trying to finish up my double major / double minor / honors' thesis / president of the literary magazine time here at school, and that's a perfectly understandable excuse, but I also think I'm becoming afraid of writing and accidentally producing crap.
I'm stuck in that external locus of control mode, judging myself by the writings of others, both fantastic writers here at my school, and storyteller noders like Halspal and iceowl, and soon enough, I find myself spending my afternoons singing along to Ani Difranco and Soul Coughing tunes rather than writing my own.
I've also been thinking about whether I should try to move to Japan in a few years. I've studied the language for almost 8 years now, and I'm so-so at it. I feel like if I'm gonna put so much time into something, maybe I should try being a little better than I am. But I've got a whole life here in the states, and a nice relationship, and there aren't a lot of pencil 'n' paper roleplaying gamers in Japan, and I'd really miss that.
I'm working very hard to make "being creative" my job, but will I accidentally kill off my creativity in the process?