Anna Koop

Fact 1. I have more interests and ideas than are possible to follow through on in a lifetime.

Fact 2. The more signs of those interests and ideas that I have scattered about on my computer and physical environment, the more often the “what if” and “I want to . . .” trains of thought are set off.

Conclusion: I should clean up before trying to work. And maybe try to keep the number of projects out and about down to a dull roar?

I have had impossibly high standards for writing, and I’m only just starting to realize this.

I love writing and have loved it for as long as I could do it. Yet for most of my years I would only count certain kinds of writing as Writing, the kind of Writing that makes you a Writer. Letters didn’t count. Journals definitely didn’t count, or only when they were written for some future grandchild to discover and use to explore a lost yesteryear. Notes on things I was learning didn’t count. When the internet came around, Usenet and then forum posts didn’t count. School assignments—certainly not. None of these were Writing. Doing these things with pleasure did not make me a writer, let alone a Writer.

Things I thought would count: poems, although I had an obligation not to inflict more bad poetry on the world. Stories, especially (only?) the eventually publishable kind—and these would require good ideas and excellent writing and well-formed thought and perfection in many other ways. Articles if they were written for publication—requiring good ideas and thorough research and reams of proposals. Blogging if you were very serious about it, building up a readership and posting daily with carefully edited and thoughtful articles on a specific topic—and what did I know? And did I want the pressure?

In grad school, I started to think more seriously about non-fiction writing as Writing, and that academic papers could maybe count, although a textbook would clearly be better. And anyway, I wasn’t a real paper-writer until I was first author and really owned the topic. And paper-writing isn’t real writing, because have you read the average academic paper? Clearly not written by a wordsmith. An academic paper is about getting the ideas and information across, not Writing. Thinking of it as Writing would just mean I was wasting time and energy that should be spent on Communication.

My Master’s thesis? Not real writing, because everybody has to do it.

So in spite of regularly spending a huge portion of my free (and work) time writing, I steadfastly refused to see it as Writing. This meant I must be either self-destructive or deluded—how could I think of myself as a lover of writing and call myself a writer when I didn’t write?

In retrospect, it’s pretty embarrassing that it’s only in the last year I’ve realized that I’ve been writing all along. It has always snuck in there one way or another.

So, Writer/writer and “real” writing be damned, the important thing is that I am writing. A lot. And I adore it.

My birthday present from my sister Sarah came today last week: SleepPhone Headphones from ThinkGeek. They are everything I hoped for—comfy, not too warm, good sound without blocking too much noise (but you can always ramp up the white noise generator when you *want* to block noise). Perfect for sleeping while away at conferences and might even be good great for sleeping at home.

Okay, since my initial enthusiasm, they have only gotten better. The addition of the NatureSpace iPhone app and a bunch of their tracks—the best relaxation trick since podcasts (if not diaphragmatic breathing).

The thing about the NatureSpace tracks is that they use the stereo sound, not just to route sound to both the headphones, but to make it feel like you’re sitting in the middle of the thunderstorm, or relaxing in front of the campfire (realistic campfire sounds—no mean feat!), or lying on the grass in a mountain meadow.

I’ve been forcing people to listen to the tracks because they’re that awesome. I knew about NatureSpace before, but only having earbuds I couldn’t make it work. Some of the tracks sound fine on speakers, but right at your ears is much better. The addition of soft headphones, so you can lie on your side or leave them on for hours without your ears getting sore, is just fantastic.

I’m listening to thunder tracks and cheerful birdsongs while writing, and for relaxing the campfire, the lake at night (complete with loon call, of course) and the burbling creek (Moosejaw Creek is the proper bubbly one, the others are more of the river/waterfall variety, although awesome if that’s what you want to be imagining).

I must get Joel his own soft headphones, I think. He wasn’t thrilled about them for audiotracks or music, but for nature sounds he’s all over it. My sister has added them to her wishlist too.

I have to add—the headphones look incredibly dorky. So I’m sticking to my earbuds when out and about (also, I love the mike/button on the Apple earbuds). But at home they’re getting tonnes of use. Simple genius!

ETA: I contacted NatureSpace over a little issue (that turned out to be an Apple bug) and they got back to me immediately, with info on how to fix it. How great is that?

I am working on the proposal, draft 0.97885, and have been stricken by the horrible conviction that a word I have been using rather extensively should not be used at all. It’s one of those perfectly good English words whose dictionary definition(s) mean more or less what I want it to, but the technical overlay I want is contraindicated by the technical overlay it has in other fields.

In other words:
Verification,

However, I think it might be very much like grounding in that nobody thinks it means what they think it means, i.e.: it’s used in many different ways.

This is not something I should be worrying about right now. I should be worrying about getting to draft 1.0.

That untravel’d country is, at this moment, the elusive complete draft. Beginning to end. No stopping for rough outlines or incomplete thoughts or external review or sentence finessing.

This is not a new goal, but I mean it this time. It’s a new framing that I hope will resolve some of the issues I’ve gotten hung up on in previous half-drafts (I have definitely thought that before).

…Push off, and sitting well in order
smite the sounding keyboard; for my purpose holds
to write beyond the intro, and the past
of all the AI stars, before I die.

It may be that the prose will bog us down.
It may be we shall touch the Final Section
and see the great conclusion, which we knew.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and though
we are not now that draft which in old days
moved theme and statement, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic arts,
Made weak by time and repetition, but strong in will
To write, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

ETA: Joel pointed out that this could be taken as overwrought abuse of one of my favourite poems of all time. The abuse I’ll cop to. I deny all wrought-ness. I was smirking the whole time and have witnesses. MacArthur Park, it ain’t. I’ll never have that recipe agaaaaaaaaaain! Oh nooooooooo!