How does Neil do it?
I half expect some idiot from the front row to stand up and yell that Neil's a professional writer, or for some kid from the back row to timidly ask her mommy what in blazes I was talking about. Of course, you'll have to first imagine that I was a stand-up comic doing a routine in front of a school auditorium, wherein the entire fragment of reality may very well fall apart, frothing and foaming at the seams.
The question, ostensibly - or is it? - refers to how Neil Gaiman manages to blog so regularly without sounding silly or conceited, which is how most writers tend to sound (or is this just a common stereotype of the "intellectual man?"). The reason I ask this is because for the past few days, I've been logging into my blog account with the intention of coming up with a filler to bridge the gap between my last (filler) post and my next (hopefully blockbuster) post, only to sign out again because, well, I really can't get myself up to writing something.
Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that the past week's been a horrible mess, what with my body clock reverting to it's old, primordial-soup state and taking a life of it's own, using my own social life as its sacrificial lamb. To date, I haven't been out of the house, I've been doing all my work at home (my boss is on tenterhooks; I believe that when I do show up at the office, despite the fact that I've been working as hard as I can, when I can, she will brandish a kali blade with the intent of gutting me from head to toe for the fun of it), and I've reduced myself to one to two meals a day to make up for the lack of activity. I can feel my stomach being revitalized into a sea of chi.
It could be burnout. A frightening prospect, but frightening because it's a reality. Frightening because I can't imagine myself stopping from writing, from imagining, at any point in my life. I kick so much ass with my imagination, I sometimes think that my entire life is a figment of fantasy, that one of these days I'll wake up to discover that I was, in fact, a hardcore CEO of one of the biggest cereal-and-grain manufacturers in the Philippines, and that whatever creativity I had was the result of a peyote-induced coma when my pet monkey accidentally grabbed a syringe full of the cactus juice from a passing laundry truck and injected the bloody thing into my bloodstream during a jiu jitsu workout.
See what I mean? This is the way I want to write. I want to astound, I know I can astound, and I know I want to keep astounding. I will rock the world. Someday.
But the sorry fact of the matter is that I can't rock the world until I can master the art of turning the bullshit-slash-imagination on at will. And it isn't just for writing my stories, either. There's the job. There's the letters. There's the bloody blog, and the plans I have for conquering the art world by penning comics that will rock Asgard into the depths of Hel and bring cherubim with punk hairdos and electric guitars together with peace-loving minions of the underworld together. Yin and yang. Tiu and la. Swimming together, in a circle, under one moon. Like Life itself didn't matter. So many things to achieve, that sometimes twenty-four hours a day isn't enough.
Again, how in the name of all the bloody moons of Jupiter does Neil do it??
I half expect some idiot from the front row to stand up and yell that Neil's a professional writer, or for some kid from the back row to timidly ask her mommy what in blazes I was talking about. Of course, you'll have to first imagine that I was a stand-up comic doing a routine in front of a school auditorium, wherein the entire fragment of reality may very well fall apart, frothing and foaming at the seams.
The question, ostensibly - or is it? - refers to how Neil Gaiman manages to blog so regularly without sounding silly or conceited, which is how most writers tend to sound (or is this just a common stereotype of the "intellectual man?"). The reason I ask this is because for the past few days, I've been logging into my blog account with the intention of coming up with a filler to bridge the gap between my last (filler) post and my next (hopefully blockbuster) post, only to sign out again because, well, I really can't get myself up to writing something.
Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that the past week's been a horrible mess, what with my body clock reverting to it's old, primordial-soup state and taking a life of it's own, using my own social life as its sacrificial lamb. To date, I haven't been out of the house, I've been doing all my work at home (my boss is on tenterhooks; I believe that when I do show up at the office, despite the fact that I've been working as hard as I can, when I can, she will brandish a kali blade with the intent of gutting me from head to toe for the fun of it), and I've reduced myself to one to two meals a day to make up for the lack of activity. I can feel my stomach being revitalized into a sea of chi.
It could be burnout. A frightening prospect, but frightening because it's a reality. Frightening because I can't imagine myself stopping from writing, from imagining, at any point in my life. I kick so much ass with my imagination, I sometimes think that my entire life is a figment of fantasy, that one of these days I'll wake up to discover that I was, in fact, a hardcore CEO of one of the biggest cereal-and-grain manufacturers in the Philippines, and that whatever creativity I had was the result of a peyote-induced coma when my pet monkey accidentally grabbed a syringe full of the cactus juice from a passing laundry truck and injected the bloody thing into my bloodstream during a jiu jitsu workout.
See what I mean? This is the way I want to write. I want to astound, I know I can astound, and I know I want to keep astounding. I will rock the world. Someday.
But the sorry fact of the matter is that I can't rock the world until I can master the art of turning the bullshit-slash-imagination on at will. And it isn't just for writing my stories, either. There's the job. There's the letters. There's the bloody blog, and the plans I have for conquering the art world by penning comics that will rock Asgard into the depths of Hel and bring cherubim with punk hairdos and electric guitars together with peace-loving minions of the underworld together. Yin and yang. Tiu and la. Swimming together, in a circle, under one moon. Like Life itself didn't matter. So many things to achieve, that sometimes twenty-four hours a day isn't enough.
Again, how in the name of all the bloody moons of Jupiter does Neil do it??