Report on today’s fiction writing:
Block words: 1,103
Net Words: 1,140
So there was a difference of roughly 3.3% between the two, which is consistent with the first couple of checks I did, and less of a difference than there was on Wednesday. It is consistent with my experience today, because I know I added a few sentences to my previous writing to clarify some moments and make the flow of a conversation feel more natural. That happens all the time when rereading/editing, of course, but I guess it doesn’t generally end up making more than a few percent difference in total writing for the day, based on what I’ve measured so far.
This all probably doesn’t matter in the slightest to anyone but me, but once I’ve started paying attention to such a thing, it’s very difficult for me not to note it. I doubt that it adds any significant insight even for me, but who knows? More knowledge is usually at least not detrimental, and can often be beneficial, unless the cost of obtaining the knowledge it a loss of energy or knowledge or some opportunity cost in some other area that produces a greater detriment than the new knowledge is a benefit.
Anyway…
June begins tomorrow, as I noted previously. It’s a month that begins with a good and important event, for me and my family, so that’s a double-plus-good, to steal a term from Newspeak.
After that, things get much more dicey.
Of course, the summer solstice (June 20th this year) is when the days reach their peak length (in the northern hemisphere, anyway) and then begin getting shorter, so if the winter solstice is a time for celebration as days begin to lengthen, one would imagine the summer one would be a day of mourning. This doesn’t seem, generally, to be the case, but it’s definitely the harbinger of increasing heat and humidity here in south Florida, which is not great and is apparently getting worse as the years pass. To paraphrase Porgy and Bess, it’s summertime, and the living is…oozy.
June is also the month of both Father’s Day and my former wedding anniversary. These are melancholy commemorations for me. This year would have been my 33rd wedding anniversary, but I now will have been divorced 3 years longer than I was married. I’ve also now been away from both my children–physically away, neither having been in their presence nor seen them directly–for as many or more years than they were old when last I was truly a part of their lives.
I’ve always been able to do some things quite a bit more easily than most other people seem able to do. But all those things are trivial, and none of them have ever come to much of anything, anyway. At almost all of the things which have been most important to me, I am an abject and abysmal failure.
I have apparently been at least a decent brother, so I didn’t fuck that up too royally. Not yet, anyway. I think I was a pretty good doctor; my patients always said so. But I have been a failure as a son, and as a husband, and as a father, the roles which have mattered by far the most to me, in increasing order. So, June starts on a very high peak, but it goes downhill rapidly, like the graph of 1 over (x-1):
Probably there’s some other, more elaborate formula that would describe things better, but you get the idea, I think. Actually, I should probably make it ((1/(1-x))-x or something similar. But it’s not that important. Nothing I do is important, except in a negative sense, which is the whole point.
I’ll work tomorrow, barring the unforeseen, so I’ll be writing some fiction and giving a report (also barring the unforeseen). I hope you all have a good weekend.
Robert Elessar 
Hi Robert. Meant to post this earlier but, got busy. I was wondering about the “block” vs “net” words you’re tallying. Maybe you explained that while I was away. I can hazard a guess: what comes out spontaneously vs what you cut out in a quick edit? I’m also curious about your relationship to writing… Do you enjoy the actual process while doing it? Does it give you a sense of purpose/accomplishment afterwards? Is it cathartic for you? Too many questions? Hope not. Also hope your Friday went well. It’s hard to hear you call yourself an “abject failure” of a son, husband and father. I’m sorry you feel that way. I didn’t quote you precisely. I think you said something like you’d “failed abysmally” (I can’t see your post as I write this). Good God, man. You seem like an awfully decent guy… Not to piss you off or inhibit you in anyway. Feel free to tell me to take a flying f*ck at a rolling doughnut and I’ll keep my opinions to myself.
The “block” portion is just the total words in the portion from where I started new writing that day to the end of the new writing for that day. The “net” words is the difference between the total word count at the end of that day’s writing and what the total word count was before starting editing or writing that day. Because I edit as I reread previous writing, these numbers are almost never identical, though they can be very close.
I do “enjoy” the process of writing, at least in some sense of the term, though it’s not joy of a “typical” kind. It’s not like joy in eating or watching a good show or reading a good book I wouldn’t say it’s “cathartic” but it is ego-syntonic and self-reinforcing, in a sense, like any creative process would be, or so I suspect. It’s also quite akin to a hypnotic state (more so than, say, a meditational/mindful state). I wouldn’t say that it is calming, for it is a process that is energy-intensive, and stimulating in a sense, but it isn’t a negative kind of tension. It’s the tension of being THERE and AWARE (of that process only, though…often not of what’s happening around me) and focused and productive, doing something that has long since ceased to require conscious EFFORT, merely conscious direction, a bit like playing an instrument, but more extemporaneous.
Then again, maybe if I played any instrument as well as I am able to write (skill-wise, not quality-wise), it would feel just as creative and spontaneous. Writing is, in many ways, more natural to me than speech. If it is joy, it is the joy of goal-directed, focused and productive and creative action, quite different from the joy of relaxation or release or indulgence or dissolution of self–though there IS very little in the way of self-awareness going on when it happens.
Doing interesting puzzles, or solving (or trying to solve) interesting math or science questions, can feel similar, but my skill in all those areas is not as great, so it doesn’t happen as often.
It is also, by the way, something of a compulsion, but it isn’t a negative one, and it has never yet made me feel guilty. I guess that’s the way it’s ego-syntonic. It’s a compulsion that doesn’t engender any conflict with my values or goals or aspirational self or whatever. That may be something only creative endeavors can deliver, even if they’re nothing one would ever want to share with others.
As for the latter part of your comment, well…I’m not sure how best to explain. I know me better than anyone else does, and I’m the one whose judgment is being applied to me, and I am unable to cut myself slack in these matters. I do NOT love myself, and I don’t know if I ever really have. I’ve tried to “reprogram” myself with autosuggestion and so on, but I cannot maintain a program of trying to say, for instance, that “I love my life and I love myself” to try to convince myself of the truth or make myself believe it, because…well, I DON’T, and saying the words makes my mind itch and feel crampy, a bit like how I imagine being unfaithful to a partner would feel.
There are people and things and concepts that I DO love, deeply and powerfully and persistently, but I am not one of those things. And, though there are people I dislike more than I dislike myself, I don’t have to spend every instant with them.
I have succeeded at trivial things, things that are comparatively easy for me, like academic matters and science, and medical school and (to a limited degree) music, all that, which I knew I could succeed at before I even started. It was all just plug and chug. But I’m not good at relationships, it seems, and the ones that have been closest and most important to me, that have mattered to me more than the rest of the universe combined, at these I have failed, consistently. I have disappointed and caused pain and anger for those who have mattered to me most, to the point where they have no longer wanted to be in contact with me, or have cut me off in other ways. So I consider myself justified in considering myself a failure. And it’s my judgment that is dispositive here.
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