{"id":299,"date":"2009-09-15T21:26:28","date_gmt":"2009-09-15T21:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/09\/15\/on_inspiration\/"},"modified":"2009-09-15T21:26:28","modified_gmt":"2009-09-15T21:26:28","slug":"on_inspiration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/09\/15\/on_inspiration\/","title":{"rendered":"On inspiration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jenny’s post just now<\/a> reminded me, through a maze of twisty mental passages, all alike, that I received a letter from a friend today. Nothing strange about that. What was<\/em> a little bit strange is that my friend has written a draft of a book\u2014a novel\u2014and is about to start editing it. He’s asked me to take a look in a month or two, and tell him if it’s any good.<\/p>\n

\nNow, before the rest of you start going and getting ideas, I should explain that Nigel is a very good friend, I believe he can<\/em> write; and I showed him Josh Olson’s rant<\/a> and only then said I’d do it (this Seussization<\/a> of that rant is superb, by the way).<\/p>\n

\nWhy am I telling you this? Well, it’s not because he’s taken a rather startling event from the end of my DPhil as the basis of his plot, nor because it sounds like Lab Lit<\/a>. I mention it because I’ve been completely crap at writing recently, but for some reason I don’t feel jealous<\/em> that he’s managed to finish his book first: rather, I am chuffed to pieces and feel spurred to action.<\/p>\n

\nSimilarly, I don’t feel jealous of Jenny’s nicely lined-up kit, nor her writing of papers. There is a very slight pang because dammit, I enjoyed doing all that, and I don’t get to do it any more; but most of all I am happy that she and other people here are still doing good science. It makes me happy even if I can’t take a direct part in it (even if she still hasn’t let me come in to split her cells\u2014come to that, SCurry<\/a> isn’t letting me near his x-ray sets, the tight-fisted barsteward). It’s not jealousy, but rather a vicarious chuffedness. And it inspires me to do more, do better<\/em> myself. <\/p>\n

\nSo, I’m going to have a look at that half-written short story. Straight after I finish worrying about the cicadas in Eva’s<\/a> recording for the next LabLit podcast…<\/p>\n


\nAnd I do hope that f1000<\/a> will feature all your papers, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jenny’s post just now reminded me, through a maze of twisty mental passages, all alike, that I received a letter from a friend today. Nothing strange about that. What was a little bit strange is that my friend has written … 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":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}