For the past couple weeks I've felt my creative powers retreat. Instead of pulling abstractions out of my observations, I've just observed and moved on, amused. It's happened before. It's an imbalance between RSS feeds and this blog, a correlation between reading more and writing less. I wonder which is the cause and which the effect, or is there a hidden cause?
I've discovered several fun new RSS feeds. Sensing the imbalance, I've also begun to cut some I'd like to follow. But TV lovers know they can't watch every show they'd enjoy. Same here: the Internet is functionally infinite. Several of the feeds I've come across lately are very time-consuming. Consider, as an example, jalopnik.
Jalopnik.com is about cars. All about cars - new models, classics, obscure niche cars, racing, customization, the lot. At over a dozen posts a day, if you're a car guy, Jalopnik will give you all you can handle. In fact, I'm tempted to say that you definitely are a car guy if you keep coming back to Jalopnik. I get Car and Driver and Road & Track in the mail, but that's only once a month. Well, problem solved.
Jalopnik is a Gawker Media site. As Scott Rosenberg noted in "Say Everything", Gawker works their bloggers pretty hard. Here's what you have to do to make a living at blogging: repost press releases with commentary; go to trade shows and post picture galleries of the displays; build a community by moderating and contributing to comment threads; solicit input from your readers in the form of photos and stories; write a long article maybe once a day; and above all, project enthusiasm relentlessly. Whew! I don't read through it all--I couldn't, even if I wanted to or felt I should--but I appreciate the flood of information.
I've also begun reading books again. I think that happened when I cancelled my subscription to the New Yorker. Books, blogs - it's consumption. I guess it's a good first step that I hear the little warning bell to tell me I'm only consuming, not creating. I'd like to keep my balance better, but nobody's perfect. I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I'm just going to try to improve.
Nothing wrong with spending time reading, Jeff. You are creating when you read. You are creating images, memories, impressions, wisdom. You're cooking it all up in that thing called your brain and one day it will spew back out - maybe not in the form of a novel, short story or blog posting; perhaps as something much less tangible, but no less wonderful.
ReplyDeleteWhat were you doing up so late, girl???
ReplyDeleteI sometimes wonder if other people read differently from the way I do. It was only recently that I started to take notes - I'd stick spiral notebook pages in the book as I went. It used to be that I'd just get lost in it, and seldom make connections between what I read and my own surroundings. I think it was a way to just check out for a while. (Maybe it was all that science fiction and fantasy!)
I'm back to sleeping on the couch again. Fall asleep reading and wake up and read some more. Need to stop doing that.
ReplyDeleteI don't take notes most times I read, unless I'm doing research for something special. But writing my book reviews is a sort of note-taking in a way.
This is a pretty familiar dynamic for most writers. The good news is that everything you take in will eventually be used, somehow. It's quite natural for there to be periods where you're inhaling (reading) lots more than exhaling (writing). But over your lifetime, it'll balance our pretty well. Just be happy that you have a natural tendency to be a learning machine, which is the best foundation for any creative endeavor.
ReplyDeleteThat is comforting, actually. Thanks John.
ReplyDelete