Justine Larbalestier

reading, writing, eating, drinking, sport

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Another reason I love my job »

Too interesting

I’ve been trying to diagnose my current writing woes. While, yes, there has been an insane amount of admin, travel, and the site disasters of the last two days1 have not been helpful, but they’re not the cause, they’re just hindrances.

This is my current theory:

The world I’m living in right now is much more interesting than any world I could write.

I can’t look away from the election. From the world financial crisis. From all the crazy stuff that’s going on.

Is anyone else having the same problem?

  1. Plus now having to look for a new webhost [↩]

Posted by Justine at 7:50, 31 October 2008 under Liar Book, New York City/USA, State of the World, Writing life |

Comments

  1. toxicfur Says:

    Yes. I write technical stuff for my job. Technical stuff with hard deadlines that I can’t move because I don’t feel like writing. Even so, I’m having a really, really hard time doing anything besides reloading fivethirtyeight.com and reading and listening to the news.

    October 31st, 2008 at 8:55 am

  2. marrije Says:

    oh yes. this american election thing is very much killing my productivity, and i only want to listen to npr’s planet money podcast, because they do such a great job of teaching me all sorts of new things, like what are credit default swaps & such. fascinating. in its scariness.

    god, i hope obama wins.

    October 31st, 2008 at 8:59 am

  3. Gwenda Says:

    Sort of — although I think crashing to finish this book by election day (which is my deadline from Martine) is the only thing keeping me relatively sane. Otherwise, I’d just reload Talking Points Memo ever five seconds. I try to use the political sites as a reward for getting stuff done. Plus, I know if it doesn’t go the way I want, I will be sooooo depressed afterward, I figure I have to get done beforehand.

    October 31st, 2008 at 10:25 am

  4. Kelly McCullough Says:

    Yep.

    October 31st, 2008 at 10:41 am

  5. Robyn Says:

    Productivity? What productivity? Never had any. I write technical stuff for my job, too, and… well, I’m just cutting and pasting stuff out of emails at this point, raplacing “the user” with “you”. Today, I blame Halloween spirit (sugar rush).

    October 31st, 2008 at 11:26 am

  6. Diana Peterfreund Says:

    Here here.

    October 31st, 2008 at 12:00 pm

  7. 7. Justine Says:

    Tis most excellent not to be alone. Not that I’m looking at any of those sites or Daily Kos or anything. I’m working I am. Yes, working . . .

    October 31st, 2008 at 2:05 pm

  8. Emily Says:

    Its boring!

    October 31st, 2008 at 2:49 pm

  9. Brent Says:

    Actually, my current world is a little too depressing. I much prefer the worlds I write in. Little things like the good guys winning most of the time perhaps?

    October 31st, 2008 at 2:58 pm

  10. Hillary! Says:

    Very depressing for me too. I need $175 to pay for rent and car insurance. I am freakning out a little. Maybe this will teach me how to manage my money. I don’t like being an adult.

    October 31st, 2008 at 4:17 pm

  11. PixelFish Says:

    Um…..barring my arguments on Scalzi’s site (I’m on the pro-gay-marriage side) I think my politics crunching has been limited to making sure I can vote at all. (We just moved to Seattle. My boyfriend’s registration appears to have gotten lost, so he has to cast a provisional ballot, while my registration had an error on it that got corrected today. Whew!)

    Otherwise, I’ve been ignoring most of the politics (except for pictures of Barack O’Lanterns) and playing lots of World of Warcraft.

    October 31st, 2008 at 5:11 pm

  12. Jack Heath Says:

    This whole “end of the world” thing has yet to reach the point where I’m forced to stop ignoring it - my powers of ignore-ance are astounding. So writing proceeds unhindered.

    There is a vague sense of unease in the back of my mind, though - how long until people stop buying books out of poverty?

    October 31st, 2008 at 6:39 pm

  13. Jack Heath Says:

    P.S. My web host is pretty good, if you’re still looking for one. They’re called Atom8 Solutions.

    October 31st, 2008 at 6:43 pm

  14. Doselle Says:

    Yes. It is awful. Truly awful. I feel as if my imagination is holding its breath to keep from anticipating a multitude of horrors just over the horizon. It started for me after Palin’s speech at the RNC, dovetailed into a deep depression and finally went into a kind of weird auto-pilot.

    I was actually considering therapy and/or medication until I realized it was just the effing election.

    November 1st, 2008 at 11:39 am

  15. Corey J Feldman Says:

    It was definitely harder to devote time to writing heading into the election. You were not alone, even stepping outside your chosen profession. I can’t even imagine the millions of dollars in lost work productivity over the last few weeks.

    November 6th, 2008 at 2:49 pm

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