Ants in the Pants Syndrome

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 http://www.flickr.com/photos/drewleavy/509975348/

Title: Street Tap

Are any of you what I call kinetic writers? I find that I have trouble sitting still for more than ten or fifteen minutes at a stretch, then as soon as I finish a particular passage I have to get up and walk around.  I’ll go down the hall and use the bathroom or look out the window for a minute or just get up and walk around the room for a minute before I sit back down and jump back into the writing. I haven’t figured out yet whether this is slowing me down or helping the neurons to fire. Obviously there is time lost in all this moving about, but it’s like sitting and writing builds up a static charge and I have to get up and release it. I don’t have a choice.  The charge builds faster if I am doing a more intense part of the story, like somehow the prose are loaded with their own electrical potential and it courses back through the keyboard and into my body as the words flow out...conservation of energy or something.  It causes me to have to get up more frequently when the story is really hopping or getting more spirited. The Ants-in-the-Pants syndrome.  It’s a good sign for me though, that I am doing impassioned work. Something is clicking in the story and I am on a roll, so I really don’t mind, and the interruption is brief, just a quick burst of energy blown off, like letting your gun barrel cool off after firing several magazine loads. I don’t know any other way, if I am in a place where I can’t get up frequently the charge builds up and creates a buffer of sorts that slows down the words coming out. I have to stop and do something else for a few minutes until the buffer clears.

Impacted by Concept - The Quantum Thief

This is not really intended to be a book review, but more the impact the book is having on me as a writer.  I’m reading a book by Hannu Rajaniemi called The Quantum Thief.  It’s his first novel and I have to say that I’m extremely impressed.  He runs a think-tank in Scotland and has a PhD in String Theory -- big brain on this guy.  The stuff in his novel is an absolutely fantastic extrapolation of social media and the internet into the far future and it’s stunning.  I read an editorial piece yesterday by Bruce Sterling (Beyond the Beyond) in the newest issue of ARC talking about Futurists and the art of predicting and how it’s not realistic to expect anyone to get it right, but sometimes the story tellers hit on the right chord.  I think Mr. Rajaniemi is not just striking the right chord, but making a symphony.  BTW, he also has a short story in the same edition of ARC.