News post: JMS: "If I don’t write, I get burned out"

[B5LR]

News post: JMS: \"If I don’t write, I get burned out\"

<font size="+1">JMS: "If I don’t write, I get burned out"</font>
<font size="3">Our beloved workaholic speaks about what makes him tick</font>

In an interview with Prevue Magazine, JMS explained his passion for writing and how he's not happy if he's not creating. "If I don’t write I get nervous," said JMS. "The first time my wife and I took a vacation—one of three times—it was about 12 years ago, she said, 'You’re going to leave all the notebooks at home, you are not going to write, you are just going to have a good time in London.' In three days of being there I was going so nuts from not writing that on the sly I went to the pharmacy to buy a notepad. I ended up sitting in the bathroom writing the novel Other Syde."

Asked how he kept things fresh, he replied, "You will never burn out if you make your stories as individual as the people you are writing about. There are something like 6 billion people on the planet and each of them has a different story. If you make your characters real enough that they become unique individuals, you never run out of things to write about."

You can read the full interview by clicking here.

 

[channe]

Re: News post: JMS: \"If I don’t write, I get burned out\"

People ask me a lot why I chose writing as a field. The pay is horrible, the employment rate slimmer than Kate Moss or Twiggy, and it's unforgiving - absolutely, completely unforgiving.

Ani diFranco has a good way of putting it: "Art is why I wake up in the morning." It sounds silly, but I wake up in the morning to write. They keep on asking me why, when I put in ten-hour days of making words string together in meaningful sentences, why I do it.

I just tell them that if I can't pick up my pen, I'd just implode.

It's nice to know that professionals in the field feel the same way.

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The writer's life is not meant to be a happy one. We all accept that going in. -JMS

 

[GaribaldiHairs]

Re: News post: JMS: \"If I don’t write, I get burned out\"

I'm *exactly* the same person, but about video computer programming. I wake in the morning to code. And I know nothing better to relax after a 15 hours straigth of coding at job than ... coding my own stuff at home before going to bed.
My wife is there to keep my equilibrum, because without her, I'll become very fast a kind of repulsive ugly mutant locked in his own world But like Straczynsky, if my wife try to put my away of coding, I very soon start to become nervous, and tend to put coding idea on paper...
On all thoses aspects, I consider myself a pure artist, even if "coding" isn't considered a "real" art, in my mind it's a LOT similar to script writing, except that the pay check is LOT more thrilling (sorry Channe

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When I said my quarters were cold, I did not mean "Oh, I think it is a little chilly in here. Perhaps I'll throw a blanket on the bed." No! I said it was cold! As in, "Oh look - my left arm has snapped off like an icicle and shattered on the floor!"
- Londo