Writing when tired?

[spark]

The last few nights I've intended to knock a few words after work in the evening, but I've found myself tired by the evening when I would be able to start writing.  I have the same issue with the class that I'm taking and I have to post on discussion board for homework- and I can't find my voice.  Out here, it's not a big deal, because I don't have a deadline, but it's hard when I need to make a post for my class.

[~Brian~]

@spark

when I was in college in 93 to 95, we were doing in person classes for the most part, and that was because this was before we had the Internet, but we had access to our computers and our software in our computer labs. I always went to class, did my notes, ended up typing all my papers on my personal PC, and then I went up and did all of my work. Most of the time I would go to the lab because I wanted to use the IBM postscript laser printer for some of the more “professional “fonts that it could provide us when we were trying to write things.

my first year as an Associates candidate, we ended up getting the ability to use ROLM phones with a black box module, and that would connect to my PC serial port, and that way I would be able to communicate with the phone, which would in turn allow me to communicate with the server in the computer lab in the building next-door. This expanded my ability to access all college resources on my PC find use of the network card, and I was able to access almost anything at a push of a button. When I ended up getting the Internet and the college network access, then I was able to branch out and be able to be anywhere in the world at any time of the day or night, and my eyes were open as to what was available on the Internet and what we ended up getting was a hodgepodge of everything in the world.

I remember all the nights that I used to stay up and work on papers, and worry about how they looked and all that and I would put extra time into making sure they were as professional as possible. It was a hard thing to do, but it was something that I had to do because I wanted to put my best foot forward and make people think that I was pretty smart when I actually was.  One strategy that helped me was when I was taking notes I would try to remember what the teacher would say in my mind and then it would snap on, the ability to be able to recall what he said if I just concentrated. Teachers nowadays can do an in person class no sweat, and I’ve been doing it for about 55 to 60 years or more. Back in 94 and 95, I had an instructor who had his late wife come down with cancer. As a result of this, he had to go with his wife to Houston Texas, for about 2 1/2 months, and that meant we had to forge new ways of doing things.

specifically, we were doing classes “remotely and online“ in a way that was never really thought of, but Champlain College in Vermont did have the ability to use the Internet and email to be able to communicate all over the place. What would happen is my instructor Dr. Hannaford would end up giving us assignments and email every week, and we had to at least respond to him once or twice a week and let him know what it is that we ended up learning from the textbooks. We also had to have an in person class one day a week out of the two, but all of us decided that it would be kind of stupid for us to meet in the classroom for an hour when I we’re doing is sitting thereand basically all we’re doing is talking but we’re not discussing the text. When I noticed this was happening, I emailed the professor and told him what we had felt like, Because we find it easier to be able to email him and tell him what we learned, rather than having to sit in a classroom for an hour and waste our time. Several times I will go back and do homework during that period, but I would always read my assignment. In college you had so much to read that you had to make a decision as to what you read and how much of it, because if you read everything that they had to read, your brain would be about as useful as a pound of string carrots peas or broccoli – something I did not want my brain to be.

What we did during that semester was earth shatteringly new, and was unheard of at the time. Most times kids would be in a class for a Minimum of 50 minutes and a maximum of four hours, dealing with a lecture and sometimes that can be a pain in the butt. However, learning how to do it sending an email, and being able to convey what you think you learned out of an ethics class, or being able to tell him what Kant or Socrates said, and what it meant in the text and what it means to us, made me think of new ways to respond to him because it was very enlightening to be able to read that text. Sometimes that text alone would be able to help me relax, because it wasn’t really hard to relate to what was being told to us.

Writing is an art, and it can be a science, because you have to learn the mechanics and the ways to write, and once you learn those ways, you adapt them to your writing style and be able to convey your ideas on paper. Basically your pen is like a water fountain, and your ideas flow from your brain, down to your hand, and the signals go from your brain to your hand telling your hand to write whatever you are thinking. Sometimes it was really hard for me to be able to write long papers. I took care of that because what I would do is I would sit down at my console, and I would start thinking about what I wanted to write. I didn’t care what the heck I said or what the heck I thought, I just wrote it down just like when you have to urinate really bad and it just keeps coming and coming and coming nonstop – writing sometimes happens that way, and sometimes the faucet is wide open, and ideas come easily, and sometimes they come too fast – and sometimes the Spicket is closed, and it’s very hard to come up with ideas or to have the ambition or motivation to be able to write. It also helps when you frame whatever you’re writing into the context that you’re trying to frame it with. It is going to be a lot easier to write when you don’t have anything to worry about and you can just let your ideas flow from your head to your pen to the paper/keyboard, when you are writing academic papers, and you have to realize the subject matter and be able to frame it in that context, that is what can be hard!

In the end, I’ve been there bud and I’ve done it – it took me a while to understand how to do it that, and I might have had a ridiculous idea about just writing down anything that came to my head, but the fun part was that I would be able to go back and reread my notes and if I like the ideas then I would be able to write them in more solid form and then those ideas became parts of my paper, and then the research that I did with the notes would be able to be used to Form arguments or make statements that I could back up with my research. Fret not because writing is not something That comes easy, and that will depend on what you’re writing and why you’re writing it. Write when the feeling comes to you, and remember we all need rest, so if you have to take time off because the urge isn’t there, then yes do it because that will help you recharge!

Brian

 

[LtlGary]

I tend to work best in a room without distractions. Many times when I've worked on my stories I would do it in the library, during church or at a friend's house. I can't be around my desktop computer because I'll boot up my computer games and waste hours of my life instead of writing.