On plot and character development
Sometimes your motifs get disconnected from your characters' motifs, and it gets confusing. Like you read them saying this or that, and you realize that you have no idea why they say that.
Like, they act on some artificial premise, which has little to do with your own motivation. If the initial dialogue comes as a reflection of something vague and fleeting, further on, after I rewrite it, I completely lose track of how it is connected to my initial ideas, Those ideas have also successfully escaped my head. Or they just don't seem relevant anymore.
Meanwhile, the characters living their own internal lives would certainly object to me making them saying certain things. "Why on Earth would I say that?"
At some point, some of the remarks sound artificial, connected to the characters' objectives they don't really care about; it's just me pulling strings. Indeed, the characters do have their own motivation, but I've already put them into the situation where they wouldn't end up if they acted driven by their own motivation.
This is where it becomes difficult. To continue from some point in the narrative, when you don't understand how the situation came to this point, and why this sequence of events happened in the first place.
The problem with trying to come up with the plot development out of the blue is that you are always trying using it to answer your own thoughts and questions.
You begin the story with one set of thoughts, and at some point, you begin to think about different stuff. And then it becomes problematic to make a connection. Like, you are trying to follow through with your initial idea, but it doesn't sound relevant anymore.
Also, the whole process becomes more difficult because of all those breaks and interruptions in dialogues. I know what those people are talking about, but it begins to feel that each of them eventually talks about his/her own thing.
Also, I have an approximate idea about some characters' attitudes towards each other, but I don't know yet how they are supposed to express it. What their interaction is going to sound like eventually. And the character whose voice I hadn't heard yet before, begins to sound cliche. Once again, he is trying to live up to one single trait I gave him in terms of personality.
And the worst of all, I have no idea where this exchange is leading to, and what's its point in the first place.
It feels like trying to draw a sketch of an object while you don't know exactly how it's shaped. You have some idea about its outlines, but the details are obscure in your mind.
Meanwhile, the energy flow is like a stream of water under pressure trying to escape through an extremely narrow pipe of dialogue, confined within all those layers of conventions and rules.
It somewhat bends and distorts the pipe itself, producing the trickle down flow, contaminated by the pieces of plumbing, torn off and swept into the stream by its savage power. The stream is too wild to be properly shaped and directed and therefore useless.
I wonder how to deal with that. I think this energy should boost my productivity, but it feels like there is no sufficient infrastructure to properly utilize it.
Or there is infrastructure in place for the lower flow of energy of a more refined type, and it cannot handle this raw and brutal kind of energy.
Anyway, it's difficult to hear false notes in the dialogue while you are trying to write it. And unfortunately, when you are so highly tuned, distinguishing between true and false notes, almost everything that comes next sounds artificial and robotic.
And while you struggle with this single line of dialogue, the whole point of the dialogue somewhat slips away, leaving you with this building up pressure that doesn't have an outlet anymore. Therefore it is threatening to destroy you.
I want to express all the themes that produce that bizarre carousel in my head. Those themes circle around, fading in and out from consciousness. I don't know how they are going to fit in, though. And I realize that my main motivation at this point is to channel the flow of energy. Which somewhat intersects with what's going on at this point of the dialogue. Although, maybe not that much. And this outlet is so narrow, it squeezes and cripples the thoughts, trying to pass through.
On procrastination
The strange thing is that the most immediate task at hand always possesses some sort of a negative magnetism.
If you need to do something right now, and it's really important, your psyche pushes you away from this thing. As if this task has a positive charge, and your psyche has a negative charge. As a result, you keep circling this task like the electron around a proton, creating some cool similarity to the atom. And you are not able to get close enough to start actually doing that task as if it's freaking enchanted.
I don't fully understand this psychological phenomenon and how to get around it. Like, I don't have troubles with writing unless I know that I have to write something, and it's important.
And when I have to write something before a certain deadline, this very idea produces in my head the whirlwind of panic and procrastination. And the forces of negative magnetism powerfully push me away from the task.
I know that if my immediate and urgent task was something different, say, housework then I would write the script without any psychological difficulties. Meanwhile, the housework would loom as a horrible and unpleasant necessity, which I wouldn't be able to make myself do. And vice versa.
Maybe it's this feeling of urgency and the shadow of the deadline, floating above my head and stirring my thoughts previously neatly and carefully arranged.
The sparkling neurons
Sometimes my brain is wound up to such degree that I feel the sparkles flying between my neurons and the buzzing feeling of fever.
And, at the same time, there is a feeling of fatigue, making it difficult to compose coherent sentences.
On the other hand, without this train of thoughts, providing an outgoing channel for this heat, the brain turns upon itself with the scorching blaze of destructive energy.
So I'm kinda trying to channel all that extra energy outside. Although, I realize it sounds pretty weird and doesn't make much sense. Anyway.
The feverish air of autumn heat. The orange blaze of the sun, and leaves turning tired and dry. Everything falls into the state of suspension. Like, something is going to happen. The tension is palpable, dense, and heavy.
It feels like a replay of the summer on the film. The film is touched by the yellow hue of passing time, fatigue, and exhaustion. Days, following one after another, and the attempts to make sense of this all. Finding the right way among the crossroads. Getting lost and ending up with this fear and the fear of night. Too much caffeine and misgivings.
Ducks gather at the spot where spectators throw them breadcrumbs. The pond presents a magnificent view and smells terrible. The yellow light of the early evening sketches the eastern side of the pond with an amazing clarity. Every small detail is visible like in a perfectly rendered 3d model. Worries about grammar and style and correctness of the sentences.
I wonder what is more depressing; the long sequence of failures or the long sequence of successes. I think the latter. Like, when it's the former, you feel like you are at the beginning of something, some story. A story full of challenges, adventures, difficulties. In other words, things, distracting from the thought that the life is pretty dull sometimes.
So, this is the beginning of the story with a carrot of success dangling at the end. And when after the years of struggle the success eventually comes, you realize that it's cool, but it doesn't make you happy. Whatever meaning you put in this word.
So it's the most difficult and depressing moment when again you stand at the crossroads, trying to choose the correct way. After a string of failures, you know that you are on the right track. And life begins to make sense once again.
When the summer ends, I always wonder what this winter is going to be like. Like, winter is somewhat of a descent into some pit full of troubles, the point of balance on the brink of survival. Like, it's some emotional black hole, and you skate along its edge, risking to fall below the horizon of events, or whatever. Like, it sucks in all the light, and there is no escape. At the same time, it's like a song about the birds, flying to the north. Always to the north.
This song reminds me about the temporariness of everything in my life. Mostly people. Which is pretty sad, but it's like the situation when you can't stay anywhere for long. Because you are always compelled to continue your motion. And over time the terrain becomes wilder. Still, there is something about it. Something that makes sense.
The sparkling of neurons and fever subside, the outside world is consumed by darkness so dense as if somebody has thrown a thick blanket over everything. Now it looks like a big dark closet with some dim light bulbs glowing in its corners.
On the computer software
There is that feeling of the overflow of incoming stimulus. The flow is hindered by the all possible forms of delays and interruptions.
Things, disrupting the normal stream of consciousness, requiring to pause and wait for endless events to be finished. This is when the brain begins to boil in exasperation, feeling that the precious minutes are stolen in a flurry of small pauses. Those message boxes, diverting my attention and compelling me to wait, while something is getting completed in the inscrutably irrational depths of software algorithms.
Various symbols convey a message; Sit and wait. Time and again, it breaks down my rhythm, the continuity of what I was doing just before. And then the brain goes blank. It takes twice as much time to get back to the productive flow of thoughts.
And then there is the next interruption as if the computer algorithm was specifically designed to render my brain helpless and floundering.
Every app has its arsenal of small and annoying distractions. Eventually, I add up the time I spend fighting those distractions, time I spend to get back on track, the time I spend, waiting for the computer brains to make its inscrutable decisions.
Meanwhile, the computer screen shows me the spinning sign, indicating that I should patiently wait until it solves whatever it is it solves. Sometimes I think that those are the things that have nothing to do with me. Like, maybe, it calculates some cosmic problems or trying to decide, what would be the best way to take over the world.
So if I add up all this time spent in such way, it's a lot of time. And also it leaves the feeling of a slight brain hemorrhage, and that my IQ dropped several points in the process.
It makes me furious, how all those apps instead of making my life more efficient apparently consider that my life should be completely devoted to maintaining their well-being. Like, they persistently show me the cheerful notifications, indicating that they want to be updated, their settings need to be adjusted and other bullshit.
And after I press update, the App joyously shows me the update progress bar for the eternity. Then it gets stuck somewhere in the middle. Then it shows me a sad message that they have failed to update because of some inscrutable reasons, involving a chunk of machine code I could care less about. Then it urges me to go to the technical support page, containing somewhat twenty enormous paragraphs none of which is related to this problem whatsoever.
At this point, I realize that I've spent a huge amount of time doing something completely different from what I initially planned to do. Namely, maintaining the well-being of the computer apps, as if they have already conquered the humanity and made me their slave.
So then I delete those annoying apps just in case, mourning in the process all the valuable time this app has stolen from me. I don't know maybe it's just me. But sometimes I cannot stand all this bullshit