It is odd how writers such as myself always have this compulsive urge to get things "done." Those in other professions and other walks of life feel this compulsion, but with us, it is slightly different.
If you are an average American worker or student, you have a schedule and you use that schedule to get things done. You plan things. You make time for things. All in all, you are for time. Time is not for you.
However, myself and others that I know who consider themselves writers don't have that time. When you embark on a way of life that is almost completely self-motivated, you seem to loose track of everything. In a sense, what you don't get "done" seems like a failure.
An analogy:
Let's say that you are an average American, working forty hours per week (it doesn't matter where). You work 8am-5pm everyday. Fine. Then in that time from 5pm until 8am, you get things done: errands, chores, family/friends time, etc. Your day works for you.
However, let's say that you are a writer. You have no schedule. Unless you are a contracted writer (in which case I feel sorry for you), there is no one saying that they need this poem or piece done at a certain time. No. It all comes from you. When you spend your entire life making arts, it all comes from you. Inspiration does not have a time limit. Inspiration does not have a schedule. You will notice that most good writers carry a notebook or laptop or a pen with them wherever they go, because they are on the schedule of the Muses. When the Muses say that it is time to write, dammit, it is time to write (which is why you will often see most good writers in school scribbling what looks like notes during lectures—it's not notes, it's arts).
In relation to the idea of getting things done, when you write, you are creating something from the self. It's not like you're an office worker—that fax you just sent can hardly qualify as "the self," but if you are a writer, everything you do is from the self. Which is why I think writers take things undone so harshly—it is like YOU are not complete when a piece is not complete.
Often times, I will sit somewhere with my keyboard and say to myself, "I have to write something." An old poetry teacher of mine told me that if you write 100 poems, 10 of them will be good. Thus, my philosophy became that if you write a poem per day, you will write a good poem every ten days. So I went three months writing one poem per day. In all reality, in about 30 poems, only about three of them were good. So I suppose that he was right. But that was not the quest to get something "done," that was the quest to get something "good."
Being a writer is almost completely self-motivated (any writer will tell you that). The most ambitious writers will write many things at a time (although I am not speaking to my own ambition, I currently have a long poem and a screenplay in the works, in addition to many small poems that I write throughout my free time). And when you sit down to work on these things, you only have one thing on your mind—get it done.
I complain when I don't get things done. I saw [alp] before the holiday, and I told her that I was going to spend the day working on a long poem that I have in the works. She came over later and asked me if I had gotten it done, and I shamefully told her "no." It is like I failed. It is like I fail every time I don't finish it. Writing takes time, but the best writers know that time is something that we don't have, for a few reasons:
One: Inspiration comes and goes. You may feel motivated to write now, but what about tomorrow?
Two: For every second that you are not writing, someone else is that much closer to getting published over you (sad but true).
Three: We seem to not realize that writing takes time, as we sit down thinking that we can write a novel or something of the sort in that hour between putting our laundry in the dryer and taking it out of the dryer.
So we have this compulsion to get things done. And when you are a writer in academia, it gets worse. If you have to turn in a piece a week, then, perhaps for the only time in a writer's life, it is IMPERATIVE to get it done. I'm afraid to go to my teacher and say, "Well, wasn't feeling it this week" and turn in nothing. I can't do that, because it is at that point that I admit failure.
For those of you who read this, remember that compulsion. I want to study it, slightly. I want to know just what it is that makes us (or at least me) feel this way. Those of us who work or go to school, we think not of our vacations as relaxation time, but, rather, more time to write. Why are we like this? Is it some kind of natural ambition? Or is it something else that only the Muses can explain?
(I would also like to note that I did not leave my computer to stop writing this. Again, it's the compulsion).
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