Back to my old ways...

Well, I couldn't get rid of that A character thing, so I decided to go back to the old HaloScan comments thing.

I've just realized that the reason I keep redesigning the website, is that it stops me from actually writing new and interesting stuff. So, instead of writing the things that fly around in my head, I decide to design a new logo, or change the name of something (again). And it's starting to drive me mad! I've just finished reading M.J. Simpson's biography of Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker (quite good, worth a read if you're at all interested in the man, but I think I preferred Neil Gaiman's Don't Panic), and he was the master of doing anything but writing, but he found writing to be quite an arduous and painful experience. I don't. I'm just bloody stupid, or lazy. I live in fear of the day I might actually get something finished. I enjoy writing, I love getting swept up in the world's that I can create, in making the characters do whatever I want them to do (sometimes they fight back, and go wandering off on tangents I hadn't even seen...) It's just that I have this big problem about disciplining myself to sit there and actually put it down on paper.

I'm about a third of a way through a novel (well, I've written over 25,000 words by my estimate), and I'm making myself write it out longhand, and I will make sure that I won't stick a word of it into a computer until I've finished the first draft. Because I know that if I start to type it out, I'll go off on another tangent, doubt what I've written before, and change it, when I've written some perfectly good stuff already. I've seen a few things in what I've written already that will need changing, but I've been able to resist the temptation to try and sort them out so far. They're not big important plot points, just small things that would make the story better.

It's the same with my websites. Only worse! Instead of writing articles, I'll mess around with the design. And this has stopped me writing the stuff I want to write. For example, I went to see the Manics a year and a half ago, and was absolutely blown away, and really inspired to write an article, not just about the gig, but about my unusual appreciation of the band - the short version is that I've loved them since they started, completely missed and still don't rate The Holy Bible (a sacrilegious thing to say amongst the Manic-devotees) and really like their post-Richey stuff, putting me in both camps of Manic fans. I don't know every song off by heart, in fact, I've got some strange sort of block when it comes to remembering their lyrics. And, as I'm almost totally apolitical, I really like one of the more political bands around... Sheesh. The point is, I never got around to it. The same goes with films and books and so on. This site was meant to be a way for me to tell the world what I think about things. But then I think, what the hell difference does it make? Who's actually going to read what I have to say? Are my opinions worthwhile? And then it all descends into a cycle of self-doubt and anguish.

And then I go off and design a new logo...