ok i talked w dad about this post. and he read it and listened to me so W!
i had some misunderstandings.
when he said stuff like "writing isnt important," he didn't mean it as like writing isn't importnat. just that, it's not important for you to do writing right now. it's not urgent. (this means that the stuff like "if you write it, no one cares and no one will read it" is completely uncalled for and not the main point, just some tangential aside statement.)
in the first original conversation, he said somehting like, why not take notes now? like quickly write it down. then you can write the rest tmr.
and i was scared that. if i don't write it now, i lose the ideas. even if i take notes. there's a certain quality about writing like its mood, ambiance, the way you talk about the moonlight piercing through your blinds and cast a dull yellow glow against your dark walls. sometimes when i write, i don't set the mood right. now, i'm in the mood. now, i'm in a flow state. now, i want to seize the moment, bash out the shit.
dad thinks it's not that important and if you write it tmr you don't actually lose much.
ok this is a point of disagreement. but it is not a main one tbh. bc i do agree that fundamentally, there is a bar of what is worth staying up for. there will always be smtn to do, smtn to lose if u dont do it now. dad thinks that these mood things are like, worth losing to build this sleeping habit.
and i can see a world where, i'm 30 and have pulled many late nights in the past and now just have a much higher bar of what is worth staying up for. and would stay up for almost nothing, other than your kid having a medical emergency.
i also do believe that there is a skill in outlining that would cause you to be able to re-pick-up your points quickly, and i obvs do not have this skill rn bc i never outline, but yeah potentially worth cultivating. also potentially worth experimenting with - if say im in a good mood now and i stop, and actually try to write tmr, how much do i lose? get the data.
i think it's interesting. that. this was actually a pretty productive conversation with dad. we identified where we disagreed. in a civil way. and turns out it's not some big worldview uncompromisable thing of "writing is not important."
takeaways
in conversation #2, dad had some good points.
- yeah you can romanticize the writer who has a spark at midnight and slays away at writing till dawn. but. sustainability. dad was like, why do some writers die at 80 and some die at 30? ok i think it's not that deep, like there are many many factors contributing to this and idek if it's correlated with sleeping hours, but laura, you have to admit that fundamentamentally agree with sustainable lifestyle. sustainable lifestyle isn't mutually exclusive with hard work, giving everythign you have to [be successful/solve [problem]]. work hard during the day and sleep during the night and you're in for the long haul, the marathon not the sprint.
besides. when you sprint, you usually end up like having to go through recovery periods right after, and it's not actually more output over time in the long run.
- nothing is absolutely urgent. except for life/death situations.
if you want to, you can say no. the consequences are usually less than perceived.
i think this seems true.