Thursday, November 15, 2007

Not Time, Motivation

People often talk about not having time to write. On the whole, I think this excuse is a bogus one. What they really mean is "I'm not making the time."

I bring this up today because I have an 8-10 page paper due tomorrow. Yesterday I wrangled the night off of work, part of my idea being that I would have "time" to work on this paper. Instead, I opted to do some experimental cooking, watch another disc of my nifty new Angel box-set, and go to bed early. While I can partly use as an excuse the fact that my throat is breaking (woke up yesterday with a sore throat and it's not gone away) the main issue at hand is motivation. Let's face it, I've hit that burned-out, worn-out, just-don't-wanna point of the semester. Add to that my nearness to graduation, and I've got what boils down to as Senioritis.

Part of me is telling myself to just cowboy up and get it over with, or that if I just do half of it today, I can tear through the other half in no time tomorrow. Part of me is saying, "Yeah, but after I do this paper, I've got to do that other one, and then the big portfolio project is due soon after." Ultimately, these parts don't matter. They're irrelevant because there's another part, not of me, which is my professor who has decreed tomorrow as the due date. That's the part of this equation which is going to win out and get my butt in front of the computer and my fingers a-typing.

Thinking about this brings me to a question: What are the main motivations for your writing? Are they internal or external? Have you written more just because you wanted to, or because in some way you had to?

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