Thoughts only
I’ve been working on a piece in the background about a day out in Nassau, but it keeps coming out like a list of events: we did this, we did that, we did this. etc. I can’t muster any of the emotions necessary to actually give it some life. Because in my estimation, that is the critical feature that makes writing either satisfying or stale: life. You can feel the life that the author is feeling. Life is transmitted through some inexplicable force via black and white text. Somehow it’s there. You can feel it. How does that work? It must be through some force of creative concentration on the author’s part.
That is one of the issues I’m having with writing right now. It’s hard to concentrate well enough to create anything that feels worthy of existance. I suppose I could do a “blog” aka a list of things I did. But that feels like a crutch. But then, what else would I write? Very hard to say. For now, dear reader know that I am committed to writing everyday through the end of the quarter henceforth and regardless of the badness of my work. Because I need to produce a volume, as explained here by Ira Glass:
What I need to be able to do is figure out how to concentrate while writing. As I write this I suspect that one of the problems of adapting to writing on a computer is I can write so fast that my fingers quickly get out of sync with my mind.
I will say that the idea of being creative on the boat is a struggle. This is mostly because we are in a rush, jamming in adventures in beautiful locales and rushing off trying to arrive this weekend in our town of departure.
I can imagine the boredom of the person reading this: I just want to know what you’re up to! Enough with all the weird analysis! A problem could be that because of our rushed pace I haven’t been able to journal and get all of these inane thoughts out of my head, so as I sit down to write they’re the first things that spill out. Forgive me. But as per Ira’s advice, the supreme necessity is the volume of work, not the quality. The quality will be discovered in hindsight after the author is dead and has been declared a genius, but not before. I kid.
Okay, so I have a bunch of photos to share since It’s been so long. So tomorrow I’ll just do a big photo show and try to bring us up to present. We have a fun day planned including snorkeling, swimming with sharks (nurse sharks, nbd), checking out a beautiful beach, and then sailing on to our next destination.
For now, take care, friends.
