The First Post of 2024
Some musings to open up this year.
Greetings and welcome to The Year of Our Lord 2024…
This post is going to be a little bit of my musing. To be honest, I haven’t spent much time writing since I released my latest article. And what little time I have spent on writing was mostly on finishing the outline for my next novel, which I’m hoping to talk about in my next post in Germanicus Publishing1.
To be sure, part of it is my procrastination, doing other things when I should be writing. However, I have also been busy with helping out my parents, meeting with visiting family members, and the festivities of Christmas and New Years. While I wouldn’t say that I’m exhausted, I do find it difficult to build up writing momentum.
I’m not here to make excuses, though. Nor do I begrudge the times I have spent with my friends and family. In fact, I welcome them. There is a myth that I believe every writer have entertained at least once, that being things will be so much better if I just have more (free) time to write.
But this is just BS. If anything, every writer needs to be busy with other things, IRL things2. Why? Because it keeps him grounded in reality. An example of this was Counter-Enlightenment philosopher Giambattista Vico, who unlike his counterparts such as Descartes, was actually busy with the burdens of family life. That made his philosophy a lot more sane compared to that of his contemporaries3.
There’s also the writer J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings4. The man who was arguably the greatest novelist of the 20th century was not even a full-time author. In the words of David V. Stewart:
Do you think Tolkien would have been able to create his works the way he did if he had been “freed” from the burdens of fatherhood or his career as a university professor?
Until next time,
Michael P. Marpaung
Stay tuned for this Thursday.
Touch grass, as the young people are apt to say.
As an aside, I got this from the book Logos Rising by E. Michael Jones. To be more specific, his chapter on Vico. I would put in some quotes and concrete citations, but I sent my copy to Indonesia a few months ago. So readers will just have to take my word for this.
Amongst others.