I've had one hell of a week, and at least somewhat understandably, I haven't been writing very much this past week. Which is really odd for me because I'm always writing. While the cause of this vacation from writing was acute and understandable, this has led me to think about the role of my writing in my day to day life, and while it's depressing to write about not writing while NaNoWriMo is on, I think it's worthy fodder for the blog.
When I decided to set aside academe for a while the desire to write flooded back, and in a lot of ways, the fact that I'm reasonably productive in writing fiction has made the fact that I'm not in school much easier for me. At this point in my life, school (and research) is about playing with novel ideas and methodologies, and while on the surface the social sciences and science fiction writing are dissimilar, the truth is that the fiction writing and the social science work draws from the same well. As it were.
Similarly, now that I'm not in school, this blog is an outlet for the kinds of things that might have percolated out in classroom discussions and writing assignments, and keeping this blog flowing is really meaningful and helpful. Truth be told, if I don't have a chance to write in the blog at least once a week, I find that my thinking becomes somewhat disjointed and disorganized, and I have have a harder time keeping track of projects and ideas. Now I'm not saying "if you're having trouble with your thinking, blogging will help," but rather that my thinking and blogging have become linked and interconnected.
So the end result is that without my usual writing has left me feeling sort of distracted and at loose ends.
Thankfully, this past weekend I was able to carve a little bit of time out for myself and get some work done. This is good for the bottom line as I was able to do some day-job work, and good for the soul because I was able to get organized and clear my mind. One of the good things about my current situation, is that because my day-job is writing related in one very real sense even if I don't write a page of fiction on a given day I'm still a writer. Weird.
Anyway, good luck to anyone out there doing NaNo, I'll try and post one more writing related post this month, and then I'll just write, and resist the temptation to wax philosophical.
Onward and Upward!