The following paragraphs were written with programmers in mind, but they’re absolutely true for me concerning writing, translating, blogging and everything else, as well. (source) Here’s the trouble. We all know that knowledge workers work best by getting into „flow”, also known as being „in the zone”, where they are fully concentrated on their work and fully tuned out of their environment. They lose track of time and produce great stuff through absolute concentration.

Linda’s come over, all the way from the other side of the country. Which is really cool. And conversations are getting really weird. We were talking Flight from Hell and we got to incubi and succubi. Linda: Do you remember how incubi and succubi used to be so rare in fiction? And now they’re all over the place. Me: I swear to God I didn’t know Amanda had a series called Incubus before submitting to the Big World Network.

Characters’ emotions before editing:

I’ve finished recording the audio version of the first episode of Flight from Hell and I’ve sent it off to the Big World Network. Meanwhile, I’m writing episode four, which turned a bit surreal on me. Novels do that, I think. Surprise you. You think you have stuff figured out and then there’s this extra bit of richness or of fun lying about, ripe for the writing. Flight from Hell is the sort of thing you don’t plan on writing.

There is this wide-spread misconception concerning writers, which I suppose comes from literature lessons in high school: that writers need ideas. False. I have yet to meet a writer lacking ideas. They might have a bad case of writer’s block („Ok… Got to this point, what now?”), or writer’s procrastination („I will write the greatest novel ever!… Tomorrow.”), or writer’s stylistic suck („I swear I sounded different than a whiny 15 year-old last time I tried this”).

Author’s Note: This is another one of my infamously stuck-in-first-draft stories. One day I’ll actually edit it.

~*~

The first time I saw her – really, really saw her, not just glanced at her as we tried our best to catch the back seats in the small university classrooms – she was at a piano. Maybe I’d never have really been able to notice her had it not been for that one, strange evening when destiny gently pushed me out of my awkward life and into hers.

If only children can be prodigies, then I wasn’t one any longer. I’d lived through my glory years at school, where I’d gone off and won prizes for art and English, maths and physics, running circles around classmates and less talented professors. Eventually, when push came to shove and I had to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I hid behind some more studying, delaying that dreadful moment when I’d have to prove that not only was I smart, but that I was also able to do something. I chose English and physics as majors, convinced I could do both easily enough. I wasn’t right. I wasn’t very wrong, either. There wasn’t much of a personal life left between the two, but I took my exams with flying colors and dreamed of the day I’d win a Nobel prize. I don’t think it will ever actually happen, but even fools can dream.