{"id":3958,"date":"2013-05-21T00:05:04","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T07:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=3958"},"modified":"2013-05-20T23:12:35","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T06:12:35","slug":"locusts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2013\/05\/21\/locusts\/","title":{"rendered":"Locusts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\tThe science fiction author Jerry Pournelle has been keeping a blog on the internet since before the word \u201cblog\u201d was invented. He simply called it a journal and it is located at www.jerrypournelle.com<\/a>. Every so often, he\u2019ll comment that \u201cmy day was devoured by locusts.\u201d The phrase itself is derived from the Bible, specifically the book of Exodus. After several of the plagues had devastated the country, locusts beyond counting descended, eating everything that hadn\u2019t been destroyed by the earlier disasters.<\/p>\n

\tJerry Pournelle is not suggesting that his day was a disaster when he writes that it was consumed by locusts. Instead, he means that his plans for the day\u2014writing\u2014never came to fruition. Instead, his day was taken up with one distraction after another. <\/p>\n

\tEvery so often I have a day like that. Take a certain Monday not all that long ago. Not much of a surprise that a Monday would be consumed by locusts, since Mondays are the days that murder the weekend. <\/p>\n

Who likes Mondays?<\/p>\n

I had good intentions for getting a bunch of writing done, despite the rejection on a short story over the weekend. Even published authors will still receive rejections. In fact, my rejections come nearly as frequently as they did before I got published. <\/p>\n

If you\u2019re an unpublished author, disabuse yourself of the notion that publishers will swoon over your every word just because you got a positive response from one editor. There are still hundreds of other editors who have never heard of you. They don\u2019t care about your past success. All they care is that you give them something they want and need today. And it\u2019s really all about the individual editor\u2019s requirements just now: they need to fill a hole in their magazine that is 1200 words deep. If your story is 2000 words, guess what? You\u2019ll get rejected. Your story simply didn\u2019t fit. It had nothing to do with talent. But the editor won\u2019t explain why you got rejected. You\u2019ll still get the standard form letter.<\/p>\n

\tIn any case, my head was not in the best place that Monday morning. I had just sat down to start writing when my wife sent me a text. She had forgotten her lunch. Could I please take it to her? <\/p>\n

So, up I got, put on my shoes, and headed across town to her school. <\/p>\n

An hour later, I was back at my desk.<\/p>\n

Then my daughter called. She didn\u2019t feel well. Did I have the phone number of the doctor?<\/p>\n

I looked it up.\tJust because my children are not at home, just because they are in college or high school, does not mean they cannot interrupt my day nearly as frequently as they would if they were home. They have cell phones.<\/p>\n

Once again, I turned my attention toward my computer. The phone rang. It was my mother-in-law. She needed to tell me about a strange phone call she kept getting. \u201cIt\u2019s some 800 number and they never leave a message. They must know when I\u2019m at home because there were no calls like this when I was out of town.\u201d Um, you were out of town. How would you know?<\/p>\n

She wanted to call her phone company to see if they could do something about it. But she didn\u2019t have their phone number. So could I find it for her? <\/p>\n

She has a computer, but she doesn\u2019t really know how to use it. And she knows I\u2019m good at finding things like that, so a phone call to me was easier than using Google on her own.<\/p>\n

\tBefore I knew it, it was lunch time.<\/p>\n

After lunch, I suddenly had emails that needed my response. Then there were more phone calls. Then the dog needed me to let it into the back yard so he could bark at the neighbor\u2019s dogs. Then the dog wanted to be inside instead. After that, the cat decided that she didn\u2019t have enough food in her bowl\u2014she could see the top edge\u2014so she meowed loudly and plaintively until I made it mound up again. <\/p>\n

She has me well-trained.<\/p>\n

Then I remembered that my other daughter needed me to wash her bedspread because the cat had thrown up on it last night.<\/p>\n

\tThere is more to writing than just pounding at the keyboard. Interruptions are deadly to the creative process. One needs to collect one\u2019s thoughts, and formulate the words. It takes some doing to get oneself into the state of mind where writing happens. A certain amount of uninterrupted time is vital for the words to solidify in my thoughts and make their way from my brain to the computer screen.
\nBut on this Monday, the locusts kept swooping down and eating the words. Every time I was about to write, an interruption chased my thoughts away.<\/p>\n

On a good day, a day not consumed by locusts, it is easy to write my normal goal of two thousand words. On a day of locust swarms, I\u2019m lucky to make even two hundred words.<\/p>\n

\tBy the time the locusts were finally gone, the day was also gone. I had to get in my car and go pick up my children from school. My wife would be home soon. And then I would have to make supper.<\/p>\n

\tThat particular Monday wasn\u2019t a bad day. There were no disasters. <\/p>\n

But as far as writing was concerned, as far as fulfilling the goals I had for the day, it just didn\u2019t happen. Jerry Pournelle\u2019s locusts were fat and happy. Me, not so much.<\/p>\n

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The science fiction author Jerry Pournelle has been keeping a blog on the internet since before the word \u201cblog\u201d was invented. He simply called it a journal and it is located at www.jerrypournelle.com. Every so often, he\u2019ll comment that \u201cmy … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3958"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3958"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3960,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3958\/revisions\/3960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}