it was just how you looked in the light

None of my time today was used for playing Minecraft, so I am quite content. ;w; As much as I love the game, it really is difficult for me to play it even for just a bit because I always seem to get stuck on it and spend every spare minute on it for the next week. When my gameplay has lulls, though, I always return with the urge to make a new save file, and I don't like that. I'd rather just pick up where I left off, and it's such a shame when I don't because there's so many lovely projects waiting for me. D: For example, I presently haven't bothered with my creative mode save at all, but I was building Wammy's and wanted to build my house and some murals and maybe even dabble in three-dimensional sculptures. I think I was simply discouraged by my efforts with Wammy's, though, since I made the building so /big/ and also didn't have much of a clear design other than where I wanted the bedrooms to be. It would be gorgeous if I had the motivation to finish it and figure out how to make it more than just an unseemly rectangle. Despite not playing Minecraft, though, I certainly had my procrastinations. I skipped Japanese and about an hour of cleaning tonight for the purpose of perusing articles on Springhole, the website manned by the person who made the really long and detailed Mary Sue test. The website left me wondering at the identity of the writer—or writers?—responsible for the site. The webmaster is so knowledgable and wise at hir craft but also very familiar with trends in both language and media. The writing style makes me want to label the admin as a female writer in her late teens, but the wisdom present offers me the image of a well-built, middle-aged brunet in baggy t-shirts. The reading itself was informative and productive, definitely something beneficial to me as a writer, for certain, despite the time not being right.  Something additional I started pondering as a result of exploring the website was my own status as a writer. The writer behind the website is so proficient that ze has claimed my admiration, and although I feel proficient myself, I know there's still a ton of things I have to learn. One of my inadequacies, I feel, is a lack of knowledge on human psychology. I'm certainly learning, but I feel I know nowhere near enough. Similarly, I want to gain more skill at creating characters with a variety of philosophies and motivations, which right now is hard for me because I have such a limited field of experience. I particularly want to grain greater and more detailed objectivity when describing the structures and expressions of a character's visage. I want to craft masterful plots and brilliant settings; I want to expand my vocabulary; I want more practice with baring my soul (without losing any aspect of control /entirely/). Most of all, though, I want to gain the will to write, to spend time with words as if they were a video game, something in which I could voluntarily be immersed for hours. It's fantastic to know in what ways I wish to improve or to learn new things about the craft, but that's not going to help me much if I never bother to actually put the theories into practice. The worst part is that I doubt I ever really possessed such an affinity to writing at all. I often talk about a period a few years ago, when I was within the first three years of my craft and did willingly spend a lot of time writing, enough to finish the first drafts of four novels and compose numerous other pieces. Every single one of them was poor in quality, but I still relish those years for my constant time spent with the craft. Then the technology pervaded my life, however. I purchased an iPod Touch and MacBook Pro; my parents purchased a wifi router. My access to the internet because constant, and the time I spent writing dwindled away, transforming into time spent on Twig and in other places, horribly unproductive yet immensely tempting curses of websites such as Tumblr, mylifeisaverage, and Facebook. Ever since then, the will to write has become more of a myth to me than anything else, and I constantly wonder if I really ever wrote because I wanted to do or whether it was just an irrelevant passtime for me, something with which I occupied myself only because no friends or internet privileges were available. Honestly, though, I adore writing, I adore being a writer, and I adore even just the act of identifying as a writer. It's /worth/ it to me, so I'm trying to recreate an environment in which more of my time is left free to the craft. Five through seven-thirty each morning are my designated writing hours; to ensure I wake up early enough and waste minimal time, my access to Facebook and Tumblr is restricted between eleven PM and seven-thirty AM, the wifi router blocks me between eleven fifty-five PM and five AM, and my computer automatically sleeps at one AM. The problem is that it's not enough. I want to set the times back an hour earlier, stop spending time on the internet outside its scheduled blocks, and be more focused and efficient with my activities in general. I don't even know if it'll help, but once I finish cleaning the house and don't have anything so pressing to do with my time, maybe I'll start scheduling more time for writing. Maybe I'll build habits of working on it. Maybe I'll stay committed for long enough to do something with Dragon Soul and make it worth publishing. I don't know what I'll do, but if I do succeed in spending more time writing, then I know I'll be a lot prouder with myself. It'll be worth it. I just have to actually try.