Hmm. Hadn't thought of that.

[johnstonmr]

I get very little fiction written during the school year. I'll putter with something, but I rarely feel like I have the time. It's true that I use free time for other things--TV, video games, etc.--as well as playing with Tegan or just hanging out with Elli. But even when I have time, writing just doesn't feel like something I want to do during the school year, with rare exceptions when the "mood" hits me. Most of the time, though, I simply don't feel like I have the energy to devote to it, and if I try, nothing comes of it.

John Scalzi would say I'm full of shit and that I should just give it up, that it means I'm not actually invested in writing, that I'm just kidding myself when I say I want to write. But as much as I like the man's work, including agreeing with a large chunk of what he says on his blog, I think in this case he's full of shit. Lots of folks work 9-5 jobs and then write, but I seem unable to do that most of the time. Elli hit on what I think is actually the answer: I'm a teacher, not a cubicle farmer.

I'm not in a 9-5 office job, here. My job--teaching high school, in the completely unlikely event you're new to this blog, which hasn't happened in quite some time, so I'm not sure why I did that--requires a lot of creative energy. Teaching is more art than science, no matter what politicians say, and I expend a lot of creative energy in the regular course of my days. When I get home, the last thing I want to do is MORE of that, primarily because I'm just out of "juice." It sounds awful, I know, but it's sort of like my talking--I talk all day long, and when I get home, as much as I enjoy talking to my family, I don't want to anymore--I'm just tapped out. Most of the time I can ignore that, but at times it makes me a little cranky, and I'm thankful my wife often chooses to tolerate my shit.

Anyway, it's a theory, and I'm going to ask a bunch of fellow teachers about it. I'll let you know if they're the same or if I'm the only idiot in the field. :)

Comments

[milescochran.livejournal.com]

My guess would be less that you don't want to do more of that and more that you are creatively tapped out. You might still have the idea banging around in your head but the work that ti would take to extract that idea in writing is what you've been doing all day.

[johnstonmr]

Yeah, that's what I really meant to say--that I'm just out of "juice."