Half an Hour of Agency

The Half-an-Hour Plan

*sings* 
"Procrastination, my old friend,
You've come to talk to me again..."

[comic from invisible bread]

Yesterday I asked a friend how she wrote her dissertation.

I was expecting something hard core, like she went and stayed in a monastery without Internet for 2 months. (I know someone who did this.)
But I got the most wonderful useful answer. She said,
"I wrote for half an hour at a time."

If I'd written half an hour/day since June, I'd have 39 hours of writing done, which is a lot more than I have...

I've been doing lots and lots of reading, note-taking, talking, and thinking, which I need to do, of course, and love doing,
but very little actual writing.
That's the part I do not love.

I love e-mailing, blogging (hi, there!), and other kinds of informal, personal writing, but writing for work, it's like there's a vulture on my shoulder breathing dead mice into my soul....

My fandom ms is due in 151 days (1-15-17).
Half an hour a day = 75.5 hours.
That'd take me a long way toward finishing [I mean 75 hours of actual writing, not counting in editing, etc.,], since I already have my notes in order. 
I think I'll try that.

The Pleasure of Agency

I don't need any more information, but I've got a few more fan interviews I want to do---they are so fun, and provide the best quotes. 

This morning I interviewed N., one of the baristas here at the coffee shop where I spend a lot of time. 
N's a video gamer--a kind and thoughtful guy who plays a lot of FPS games [first-person shooters, where you, the player, hold the gun]. 

I asked him about violence in games--I'm not sure what to make of it, but I have to say something about it, and I want to hear it from a gamer, not an outsider.

He said he wasn't so naive as to dismiss it, but he said,
 "I used to swim competitively, and I experienced the same emotions in a race that I feel playing video games--anger or frustration or elation. You feel it for a few minutes, and then you move on."

That nonviolent sports analogy is super useful. 

Have you seen the meme of Angry Michael Phelps Face? He's said he was "in my own zone", not intentionally giving a competitor a dirty look.

 
Violence is fun--for  instance, it's fun to pop bubble wrap!

I think it's because we enjoy the feeling of agency---being the cause in "cause and effect", and violence is one of the fastest effects.

Obviously this can be a big problem for the humans. 
What then should we do?

Makers

Anyway, I'm especially looking to talk to people who are makers in their fandoms--that is, they create stuff in or about the thing they love. 
I'm finding a lot of people made more stuff when they were teenagers and had the time and friends up close.
N., for instance, doesn't do this anymore but he used to make games on RPG Maker.

RPG = role playing game. Definitions vary. These are its roots:

I want to sign up for a RPG Maker free trial (otherwise it's $80)--you don't have to know how to code, it walks you through game building...

I did start a JavaScript tutorial at Code Academy (free!), but I quickly realized it's like learning any other foreign language:
you have to practice & memorize, and I'm not motivated enough to bother.  
Still, it's cool to be acquainted with some basics---just like it's fun to learn the verb for "to be" in another language.

(JavaScript, per Wikipedia is, "alongside HTML and CSS, one of the three core technologies of World Wide Web content production.")

Yes, so I spent all morning on this-and-that, and now I am going to work for half an hour on my ms!