AV Club with Cory Doctorow

This week's AV Club interview with Cory Doctorow is worth your time. He tolerates the new book-pushing questions as best he can and quickly goes on to make some remarkably astute observations on modern cinema's treatment of technology, the future of digital distribution and how that passionate advocacy we seem to be missing is alive and well and different. Most impressive, as far as I'm concerned, is his take on the perpetual tug-of-war between discipline and muse:

AVC: Overall, are you the kind of writer who waits for inspiration to strike, or do you keep more of a strict writing schedule?

CD: Definitely the latter, and I tell my writing students this, too. It's not that you can't be a great writer who only writes when inspiration calls, but you'll never be a happy writer if you only write when inspiration calls. Inspiration is unpredictable. And if writing is the thing that makes you happy and sane—or it's one of the things that makes you happy and sane—but you can only do it when this unpredictable lightning strike happens, then you're not going to be happy and sane. You're going to spend a lot of your time moping around, waiting for lightning to hit you. One of the things I've noticed about writing every day is that there are days when writing that page feels like flying. Like the hand of God reached down and touched my keyboard, and every word is just pure gold. And then there are days that I feel I'm writing absolute, totally forgettable junk that shouldn't have been committed to phosphors, let alone saved to disc. The thing is, a month later, you can't tell the difference. The difference between a day when it feels like you're writing brilliantly and a day when it feels like you're writing terribly is entirely in your head, it's not in the prose.

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