The final episode of Week 5, a week of exploring emotions, psychology and our very reasons for writing in the first place. Please buy my novel, The Honours: https://wordery.com/the-honours-tim-clare-
Isn’t it weird I feel similar about Science, like exacTLY. The only difference is the suffering (or what I see as suffering) is actually endemic to academia... Like I had the same ‘suffering is bullshit hey I can do science’ epiphany except... you can’t escape it.
Working yourself to death is genuinely encouraged. Spinning out bullshit is rewarded. There’s a trapping hierarchy in science that is a literal ladder - to try and sidestep off of it, to say ‘hey, maybe I don’t want to climb, I’m happy here’ is career suicide. That ladder isn’t as tall when I look at novelists. Sure, publishers, the market, editors, the people who made it and those who haven’t, and yes like Tim’s saying writers have their metaphorical demons they need to purify, but it’s not some literal cursed and warped spirit representing childhood dreams trapped in the bloody masonry as is in Science. I want to escape and do something where I am my own worst enemy rather than all of academia being directly against me as well. And if I have this escape only part time maybe that’s enough, idk.
My reason for writing?
I like building worlds and have people run around them. As in, I want other people to run around them. I guess that sounds like I like making computer games but it’s more than that like, the idea that you can construct the rules of a world and let other people play in it, sometimes they’re you’re own characters or someone else’s, and see what story they make. I really enjoy having people use the terminology I made up when speaking to me, that’s one of my favourite things about this textbook, I constructed a magic system from just seeing its effects and now people are using the language I used to expand on it. It’s amazing :)