Seeking writing advice: how to keep writing

I've been having some shoulder pain for the past couple of weeks, which I've seen a doctor for. I've also noticed that I haven't actually written anything new for my novel, "S.I.", for almost that long, and have just been posting chapters from my buffer to the forum I post them in.

Given my previous attempt at writing long fiction ("Myou've Gotta Be Kidding Me"), I anticipate two likely courses. One, pain sucks, and when it goes away, my writing motivation will return, and I'll get back into the swing of things. Or two, my writing engine has run out of motivation-fuel for this story generally. In the latter case, I think I can avoid leaving the story entirely unfinished, though there would still be all sorts of dangling plot threads and unsolved mysteries; I should be able to muster up enough typing to have my protagonist finally feel overwhelmed by everything she's facing, retreat to Elliot Lake, and jump to my intended finale. It's far from a perfect solution, but seems better than putting the story on permanent hiatus (or more formally cancelling it) without any finish at all, as I ended up doing with "Myou've".

I'm hoping it's the first course. What I don't know... is if there's any way I can tweak the odds to /favour/ the first course.

Any ideas?

I was actually just thinking about it some more. About 20 minutes ago I was eating a strawberry thinking, "is this called bitter or sour?"

The hypothesis I arrived at is that I hardly eat many bitter foods and so I don't have a great label for what bitter is and so I wonder whether the sour things I eat are actually bitter.

But I think I understated my ability to distinguish them. I had some omelet for lunch today with kale and collards, neither of which I think I've had before. I didn't enjoy it. I think it's because those things are bitter. Is that true? Is kale and/or collards considered to be bitter?

Another interesting thing I was thinking about... so I've been trying to learn a bit about cooking and blending different flavors together. I was thinking about the fact that there really only exist a handful of fundamental flavors. And so since a few weeks ago, every so often I try to think about what I'm eating as a blend of those fundamental flavors. And when I do that... I stop being to recognize the "higher level flavor". Like when I was doing it with my strawberries, it tasted like a blend of sour and sugar, and then I tried to think about where the "strawberriness" fits in to that, and I couldn't fit it in - it just tasted like sour and sugar!

Interesting. So bitterness complaints is not necessarily the same as "tastes like alcohol", many people of similar experience seem to have mentioned bitter-alcohol correlation.

I might tally up the responses and see if I can get some kind of results from these.

Someone here suggested 30 attempts to get used to alcohol, I think it might be closer to 50. which is one a month for 5 years, or one a week for a year. hardly seems worth the concentrated effort.

I find I can act more freely around drunk people. Something like how you can pick up people's accents and start using them by accident. and also "pretending to be drunk" allows for more social freedom. Although being drunk seems to slow down my brain and frustrate me more than help in social situations.

there's a joke that I can get drunk off "fumes".

Everybody can, in fact inhaling alcohol vapors is a very efficient way of getting very drunk very quickly.

I have a similar experience: my usual comment on tasting pretty much any alcoholic drink is "...well, it definitely tastes like ethanol?" I kind of figured that was the point and most people who drink regularly have got adapted to the burning-aftertaste-sensation enough that they a) get to like it, and b) can taste other things in the same mouthful. I can also manage to slowly drink small amounts of quite sweet drinks, but not really anything else (and I don't generally bother to do that; I'm just not interested, really). I also seem to be pretty hypersensitive to the alcohol: I get flushed with even a tiny amount and there's a joke that I can get drunk off "fumes". This has been fun on the odd occasion a few years ago but not something I would seek out.

However, it's not quite the same as what you're describing because I don't have the general sensitivity to bitter flavours. I do like sweet things, but I also really like olives, to take your example, and plenty of other bitter foods. Not coffee though (although I do suspect I could acquire a taste for that if I wanted to try, whereas that seems very unlikely in the case of alcohol).

I don't see much brainstorming on LW. Brainstorming seems like a useful and fun thing to do.

No, exercise is a long-term mood stabilizer / antidepressant, but it does not have any immediate effects. At least my box training and push-ups done at home not. And should it be? Can you imagine an animal running around euphoric just because it is running?

What I am looking for is things comparable to downing a few drinks, doing drugs or rocking out to music, I don't think exercise can have that kind of very quickly kicking in and very intense pleasure.

And yes desk job. Does something as simple as walking have a mood effect on you? For me walking is something the autopilot does, it does not launch me out of my thoughts into enjoying the here and now.

Thanks, it is good ideas. I got two different kinds of de-training completely mixed up.

I decided that if you want to understand yourself you may start first studying others, because you will be more honest and less likely to find excuses, and then applying the lesson to yourself (not allowing new excuses). That is a good idea?

I studied my late father and current father-in-law both classical blue-collar guys with classical blue-collar vices i.e. drinking more than healthy and probably being addicted (no textbook alcoholics: they were/are never actually drunk, just elevated "bubbly" every evening).

One thing I have noticed is that the basic idea is that you don't enjoy your work and life much. And when the daily work is done you need a quick pick me up, something that quickly makes you feel good, for the blue-collar culture it is booze, for others, it is sugar (contributing to the obesity epidemic), drugs or gambling. They all act fast.

Apparently, one reason more intellectual people (typical Silicon Valley types) have less of an addiction problem is that they enjoy their work and thus life enough, they don't need to quickly wash down another suck of a day, so they can have less euphoric hobbies in the evening, say, drawing or painting.

I am fairly intellectual but for reasons I don't think I will ever have a very enjoyable job or life. It is mainly a must-do tasks to stay afloat kind of life. So I need to see how to cope better.

A) I started studying what healthy "quickly pick me up" other people are using. I found music and socialization. I.e. they put on headphones when riding the subway or Facebook chat with their friends. Neither is to my taste or possibilities. Any other ideas? I.e. not the kinds of enjoyable activities that take investment, but the kinds that are easy as downing a drink or three, calling someone on the phone or putting on music. But it has to be a strong jolt, I am very easily bored. For example something like playing Settlers of Catan on an Android tablet (against AI) bores me out in 15 mins even though is one of the most popular board games.

B) Is it possible to just to learn to put up with it all? For example 2-3 generations ago British upper classes were very good at putting up with boredom. They could spend an afternoon just reading Times. It is not exciting at all. Even Carcassone on Android is more exciting. What and how made these people so good at putting up with nothing enjoyable and fun, no jolt, no pleasure shock happening?

Am I even on the right track here?

Counter-test: what do today smart people (who know unhealthy habits are unhealthy) do if their work/life is generally unpleasant, so they need a quick jolt of pleasure injected into themselves after work? Again I am not talking about hobbies one invest into, I am talking about something one may as well do on the subway back home. Well, I know one physcist doing some kind of a PhD internship where he analyses nuclear data all day writing C++ programs (don't even ask...) and he hates it, and he is a drinker. That is not a good example.

Is it possible to rank or categorize hobbies, interests, free time activities by factors like time investment, quick jolt vs. more slow pleasure and so on? E.g. parachuting or bungee jumping does give a quick jolt, one very similar to drugs, they are very good at washing down an unpleasant workday, but they require investment in the sense of going/driving there, going up etc. people who do it normally just do it on the weekend. They are clearly not something to quickly do on the subway on the way home. Music, as long as people can find one they really like, can work as press a button, get an instant jolt of pleasure. Hobbies like painting or drawing generally don't give this kind of euphoric jolt at all. I wonder if such an avenue of research is a good idea.

About my at-work brain: not until about 4PM, however, I am not very thirsty before that, it is the usually quite salty lunch (like street döner kebab) eaten around 1PM that generates it. I drink a lot of water but mainly as routine.

I'm in the UK. I know a handful of people who've taken 8 tries or more to pass the practical test. They're not the norm, but I'd say passing it on your first go is regarded as mildly surprising! I'd guess two attempts is possibly the mode? It's an expensive undertaking, too, so most people aren't just throwing themselves at the test well before they're ready in the hope of getting lucky.