I’ve started tracking, and trying to think about my productivity in terms of time instead of pages. I try to spend at least two focused hours drawing each day, and that should matter more (I tell myself, and for now it seems to be working) than how many pages I produced in that time.
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Here are some quotes I liked from the recent Lydia Davis essay collection. Are these posts going to turn into a compendium of interesting ideas from people smarter than me? I think I’m okay with that.
Generally I resist the label “experimental,” which people sometimes reflexively apply to any nontraditional form of fiction or poetry, or to any form that puzzles them, that seems odd or strange. To me, experimental implies that the writer had a plan to test some preconceived writing strategy and see if it would work; that what resulted might or might not prove anything, and might or might not be successful.
Be patient; don’t rush your work or try to finish before you’re ready. Be prepared to sit on it for days, weeks, months, years if necessary — keep revisiting it. Work on something else in the meantime. Return periodically to a piece that is giving you trouble. Someday you may understand what the trouble is.
Do work hard on the very last words [or images -Andrew] — they can sometimes make all the difference as to whether or not a story or poem seems finished.
Free yourself of your device, for at least certain hours of the day — or at the very least one hour. Learn to be alone, all alone, without people and without a device that is turned on. Learn to experience the purity of that kind of concentration. Develop focus, learn to focus intently on one thing, uninterrupted, for a long time.
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Words Are My Matter, Ursula K. Le Guin
Frontier #22, Tunde Adebimpe