Philosophical Monday: The Tri-Weekly Habit: Be a Better Susan Sontag

So keeping your promises is really hard. I’m basically not promising anyone anything anymore in order to get my track record on point before this next week is over.

Writing for an hour and 20 minutes everyday is also hard, but I managed to do it all this week, and on Valentines morning, I hit page 200.

That’s when I realized not only am I about 2/3rds of the way through with my second novel, but also if I continue to go at the pace I’m going at, I’ll be done with my rough in like a month. So there’s that.

Still, I’m barely finding enough time to knock out an hour and 20 minutes worth of writing every day. I’m becoming rather fearful about being able to handle 2 hours and 40 minutes a day. But as always, fear is a really good thing. It means you’re moving in the right direction.

In other writing notes, I haven’t kicked the Writing Demon’s ass yet, but I have gotten rather good at ignoring it. Right now, it’s kind of like living with a parent who’s constantly putting you down. At first it gets to you, but eventually you learn to tune them out.

Last but not least, I found this interesting: an article on Anne K. Yoder’s tips on how to become a brilliant public intellectual by emulating Susan Sontag. Here was my favorite quote from the aritcle:

Be confident, ambitious, and cultivate your ego: “Good writers are roaring egotists, even to the point of fatuity.”

I have a theory that unpaid writers are either extremely over-confident or extremely under-confident. And I’m jealous of bad writers with huge egos, because I think they’ll have a better chance of making their living as a scribe than good writers with low self-esteem. So as far as emulating Sontag goes, I say you might as well work on developing a big ego, even if it makes you look like an asshole.

I mean what have you got to lose? Art is hard.

That’s all.