I’ve been having some shoulder pain for the past couple of weeks, which I’ve seen a doctor for. I’ve also noticed that I haven’t actually written anything new for my novel, “S.I.”, for almost that long, and have just been posting chapters from my buffer to the forum I post them in.
Given my previous attempt at writing long fiction (“Myou’ve Gotta Be Kidding Me”), I anticipate two likely courses. One, pain sucks, and when it goes away, my writing motivation will return, and I’ll get back into the swing of things. Or two, my writing engine has run out of motivation-fuel for this story generally. In the latter case, I think I can avoid leaving the story entirely unfinished, though there would still be all sorts of dangling plot threads and unsolved mysteries; I should be able to muster up enough typing to have my protagonist finally feel overwhelmed by everything she’s facing, retreat to Elliot Lake, and jump to my intended finale. It’s far from a perfect solution, but seems better than putting the story on permanent hiatus (or more formally cancelling it) without any finish at all, as I ended up doing with “Myou’ve”.
I’m hoping it’s the first course. What I don’t know… is if there’s any way I can tweak the odds to /favour/ the first course.
I have no direct experience with this myself, but have heard good things about http://zhealth.net. A quick search turns up Will Eden once recommending it here on LW and apparently a practitioner was brought in for a lecture at one of the first rationality camps so perhaps CFAR staff or one of the alums listed at http://rationalitybootcamp.blogspot.com could say more about it.
Is your keyboard / workstation set up correctly to minimise strain or whatever on your shoulder? I think an optimally positioned desk, keyboard, chair, screen etc should avoid much (any?) shoulder movement at all. You don’t say whether typing exacerbates the shoulder pain or if it’s just a background level of pain that’s bothering you while writing, though.
Typing doesn’t increase the shoulder pain. (As of the latest doctor’s visit, he thinks it’s actually more of a neck problem.) It’s more the general background level of pain that’s keeping me from being able to spend any time coming up with plot-stuff I want to write.
Sometimes the connection between pain and its cause aren’t obvious. I was having fairly severe random knee pains, and it turned out that getting my bike lubricated made them go away, even though the pain wasn’t happening when I was riding my bike or soon after riding it.
You might want to check on the ergonomics of everything you usually do.
Write by hand on your bed. Write on your phone during bus rides. Write by dancing to sign language. Write in a new medium humanity hasn’t dreamt of. The keyboard is just one of many possible tools.
Seeking writing advice: how to keep writing
I’ve been having some shoulder pain for the past couple of weeks, which I’ve seen a doctor for. I’ve also noticed that I haven’t actually written anything new for my novel, “S.I.”, for almost that long, and have just been posting chapters from my buffer to the forum I post them in.
Given my previous attempt at writing long fiction (“Myou’ve Gotta Be Kidding Me”), I anticipate two likely courses. One, pain sucks, and when it goes away, my writing motivation will return, and I’ll get back into the swing of things. Or two, my writing engine has run out of motivation-fuel for this story generally. In the latter case, I think I can avoid leaving the story entirely unfinished, though there would still be all sorts of dangling plot threads and unsolved mysteries; I should be able to muster up enough typing to have my protagonist finally feel overwhelmed by everything she’s facing, retreat to Elliot Lake, and jump to my intended finale. It’s far from a perfect solution, but seems better than putting the story on permanent hiatus (or more formally cancelling it) without any finish at all, as I ended up doing with “Myou’ve”.
I’m hoping it’s the first course. What I don’t know… is if there’s any way I can tweak the odds to /favour/ the first course.
Any ideas?
I have no direct experience with this myself, but have heard good things about http://zhealth.net. A quick search turns up Will Eden once recommending it here on LW and apparently a practitioner was brought in for a lecture at one of the first rationality camps so perhaps CFAR staff or one of the alums listed at http://rationalitybootcamp.blogspot.com could say more about it.
Is your keyboard / workstation set up correctly to minimise strain or whatever on your shoulder? I think an optimally positioned desk, keyboard, chair, screen etc should avoid much (any?) shoulder movement at all. You don’t say whether typing exacerbates the shoulder pain or if it’s just a background level of pain that’s bothering you while writing, though.
Typing doesn’t increase the shoulder pain. (As of the latest doctor’s visit, he thinks it’s actually more of a neck problem.) It’s more the general background level of pain that’s keeping me from being able to spend any time coming up with plot-stuff I want to write.
Sometimes the connection between pain and its cause aren’t obvious. I was having fairly severe random knee pains, and it turned out that getting my bike lubricated made them go away, even though the pain wasn’t happening when I was riding my bike or soon after riding it.
You might want to check on the ergonomics of everything you usually do.
Write by hand on your bed. Write on your phone during bus rides. Write by dancing to sign language. Write in a new medium humanity hasn’t dreamt of. The keyboard is just one of many possible tools.
Maybe speech-to-text software can make writing less painful?