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It's been a long time
Nov. 21st, 2004 06:27 pm(Actually, no, it hasn't. Heck, I haven't even been awake for six hours at this point.)
I'm beginning to think that this NaNoWriMo thing is going to be a wash for me this year, which is disappointing; I thought I had more discipline than this. But right now I have 5,000 words right now, which puts me 28,340 words behind, and I don't think I have the fortitude to come up with 45,000 words in ten days, especially not when I'm going to be traveling for two of those days, expected to interact with family for three more, and working at my day job ten hours a day for the other five.
Le sigh.
If they had a National Total Slacker Month, though, I'd be all over that.
As an aside, I should define one of the terms that I've been using. "Afford" is a term that I've borrowed fourth-hand from Joel Spolsky, who borrowed it from Don Norman, who borrowed it from J.J. Gibson. Gibson talks about "affordance" as the possible interactions between the world and an actor; Norman talks about "affordance" in a design sense (specifically "perceived affordance", which is the visible interactions between an actor and an object), Spolsky related Norman's use of the term to software design, and I'm using it to refer to the interactions between myself and, well, myself.
Affordance at its simplest is the Big Red Button principle. The reason a Big Red Button is a joke-cliché is because of its strong affordance: a Big Red Button affords pushing, and does so very, very visibly. In other words, there is a very obvious possible interaction between the actor and the button, and that interaction is pushing. On the other hand, affordance doesn't mean that the interaction will mean anything significant; Norman uses the example of a computer screen affording touching. Even if the screen isn't a touchscreen, the user can still interact with it by touching; it's just that the interaction doesn't have an effect (except possibly damaging or obscuring the screen). In my imperfect understanding of the concept, I think I have it right when I say that absent a touchscreen, although the computer screen affords touching, the computer software does not afford touching the screen.
Lately I've been talking about "affording writing", "affording drawing", or - in moments of intense self-doubt - "affording creativity". What I mean by this is that if I afford writing, writing is an interaction I can have with myself - I am capable of taking my thoughts and putting them into written words in a desired form. (That's an imperfect description at best, but it'll do.) Not affording writing means that I don't get that interaction - interacting with myself to turn thoughts into words is an interaction I don't have available. I suppose you could divide this into two affordances - affording accessing the thoughts, and affording putting them down on paper. In this case, I do afford accessing the thoughts - I can think about characterization, plot, et cetera all I want - but I can't put them down on paper, so I don't afford the second half of it. On the other hand, since affording writing is the interaction that involves both accessing and writing-down, I really don't afford writing, even though I do afford accessing my thoughts.
Also, I should note that when I talk about "affording writing" (or not affording, as the case might be), I'm actually using some mental shorthand - what I really ought to be saying is that I self-afford (or don't). Doing so allows me to draw a distinction - and I think it's an important one - between affording interactions to myself and affording interactions to others. It is possible for me to afford writing, for example, to others; they take my thoughts and write them. So what I've been talking about is self-affording.
Now, the irony is that if I'd spent the above text writing on NaNo instead, I'd only be 27,500 words down, so I suppose that a more proper description is that I don't afford writing NaNo. Another irony, which doesn't actually bother me, is that not self-affording doesn't mean that I can't externally afford - so, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fadethecat might tell you, I do externally afford writing.
It's possible that all of this can be interpreted to read "I don't have the discipline to write NaNo", and if you interpreted it that way, I'd accuse you of being uncharitable, but more importantly you'd be right. I don't have the discipline. And, in all honesty, this makes me wary of my ability to deal with school next year, because if I don't have the discipline to do what I want to do, how will I handle schoolwork?
I keep writing and re-writing this closing paragraph, because that last sentence doesn't feel right as a closer, to me. (I guess I don't self-afford conclusions, either.) I'm not going to ask for advice on improving my discipline; that's one of those situations where each solution needs to be individual, so the odds of someone else having hit on the perfect solution for me are low at best. I'm also not looking for solutions to this particular affordance/discipline problem; it isn't that I'm not interested, or that I haven't tried just sitting and staring at a blank screen, or that I want to give up. I'm not going to give up (I'm stubborn), I have sat and stared at a blank screen for an hour (and have the text "#4#" to show for it, indicating the start of the fourth chapter; and, as an aside, the first thing I thought of when I started that convention was the "MST"s of fanfic that make fun of the author's use of chapter separators. I'm using them to make the text easily searchable), and I am interested - otherwise I wouldn't have characterization and potential future plot on my mind much of the time.
I'm not sure what I'm looking for. Maybe I just needed to get this off my chest. I guess it's a start.
(I really shouldn't keep word-counting this post; it's not good for my psyche. But I do, and excluding this paragraph, it's 1,049 words long. And my brain is telling me, first of all, it took you 45 minutes to write a thousand words? And second of all, that wordcount should have gone toward NaNo. Which just goes to show you how self-defeating my brain is - because it doesn't understand that that affordance isn't available right now. Which may mean something in and of itself.)
I'm beginning to think that this NaNoWriMo thing is going to be a wash for me this year, which is disappointing; I thought I had more discipline than this. But right now I have 5,000 words right now, which puts me 28,340 words behind, and I don't think I have the fortitude to come up with 45,000 words in ten days, especially not when I'm going to be traveling for two of those days, expected to interact with family for three more, and working at my day job ten hours a day for the other five.
Le sigh.
If they had a National Total Slacker Month, though, I'd be all over that.
As an aside, I should define one of the terms that I've been using. "Afford" is a term that I've borrowed fourth-hand from Joel Spolsky, who borrowed it from Don Norman, who borrowed it from J.J. Gibson. Gibson talks about "affordance" as the possible interactions between the world and an actor; Norman talks about "affordance" in a design sense (specifically "perceived affordance", which is the visible interactions between an actor and an object), Spolsky related Norman's use of the term to software design, and I'm using it to refer to the interactions between myself and, well, myself.
Affordance at its simplest is the Big Red Button principle. The reason a Big Red Button is a joke-cliché is because of its strong affordance: a Big Red Button affords pushing, and does so very, very visibly. In other words, there is a very obvious possible interaction between the actor and the button, and that interaction is pushing. On the other hand, affordance doesn't mean that the interaction will mean anything significant; Norman uses the example of a computer screen affording touching. Even if the screen isn't a touchscreen, the user can still interact with it by touching; it's just that the interaction doesn't have an effect (except possibly damaging or obscuring the screen). In my imperfect understanding of the concept, I think I have it right when I say that absent a touchscreen, although the computer screen affords touching, the computer software does not afford touching the screen.
Lately I've been talking about "affording writing", "affording drawing", or - in moments of intense self-doubt - "affording creativity". What I mean by this is that if I afford writing, writing is an interaction I can have with myself - I am capable of taking my thoughts and putting them into written words in a desired form. (That's an imperfect description at best, but it'll do.) Not affording writing means that I don't get that interaction - interacting with myself to turn thoughts into words is an interaction I don't have available. I suppose you could divide this into two affordances - affording accessing the thoughts, and affording putting them down on paper. In this case, I do afford accessing the thoughts - I can think about characterization, plot, et cetera all I want - but I can't put them down on paper, so I don't afford the second half of it. On the other hand, since affording writing is the interaction that involves both accessing and writing-down, I really don't afford writing, even though I do afford accessing my thoughts.
Also, I should note that when I talk about "affording writing" (or not affording, as the case might be), I'm actually using some mental shorthand - what I really ought to be saying is that I self-afford (or don't). Doing so allows me to draw a distinction - and I think it's an important one - between affording interactions to myself and affording interactions to others. It is possible for me to afford writing, for example, to others; they take my thoughts and write them. So what I've been talking about is self-affording.
Now, the irony is that if I'd spent the above text writing on NaNo instead, I'd only be 27,500 words down, so I suppose that a more proper description is that I don't afford writing NaNo. Another irony, which doesn't actually bother me, is that not self-affording doesn't mean that I can't externally afford - so, as
fadethecat might tell you, I do externally afford writing.It's possible that all of this can be interpreted to read "I don't have the discipline to write NaNo", and if you interpreted it that way, I'd accuse you of being uncharitable, but more importantly you'd be right. I don't have the discipline. And, in all honesty, this makes me wary of my ability to deal with school next year, because if I don't have the discipline to do what I want to do, how will I handle schoolwork?
I keep writing and re-writing this closing paragraph, because that last sentence doesn't feel right as a closer, to me. (I guess I don't self-afford conclusions, either.) I'm not going to ask for advice on improving my discipline; that's one of those situations where each solution needs to be individual, so the odds of someone else having hit on the perfect solution for me are low at best. I'm also not looking for solutions to this particular affordance/discipline problem; it isn't that I'm not interested, or that I haven't tried just sitting and staring at a blank screen, or that I want to give up. I'm not going to give up (I'm stubborn), I have sat and stared at a blank screen for an hour (and have the text "#4#" to show for it, indicating the start of the fourth chapter; and, as an aside, the first thing I thought of when I started that convention was the "MST"s of fanfic that make fun of the author's use of chapter separators. I'm using them to make the text easily searchable), and I am interested - otherwise I wouldn't have characterization and potential future plot on my mind much of the time.
I'm not sure what I'm looking for. Maybe I just needed to get this off my chest. I guess it's a start.
(I really shouldn't keep word-counting this post; it's not good for my psyche. But I do, and excluding this paragraph, it's 1,049 words long. And my brain is telling me, first of all, it took you 45 minutes to write a thousand words? And second of all, that wordcount should have gone toward NaNo. Which just goes to show you how self-defeating my brain is - because it doesn't understand that that affordance isn't available right now. Which may mean something in and of itself.)
