My wife said my last blog post ‘reeked of depression’. Well, I can’t deny that the state of the individual programmer isn’t a little depressing, but it hasn’t overwhelmed me with depression. For one thing, programming has become such a small part of my life. I’m a writer now. And the joys of writing are so much more significant.
Being a guy, I’ve heard about the joys of motherhood all my life. ‘Bringing a new life into the world’ is one of those common phrases spoken by a new mother, with the look of joy on her face. It’s something I can appreciate but not experience.
I can appreciate it because I write fiction. I create characters, and I craft their lives. There is a joy that comes from this creation that I doubt can be appreciated without doing it yourself. My newest character, Della Barr, is going through a trial by fire in the time-travel novel I’m writing, and it’s a joy to me to see how she develops and how she bears up to the totally unjust troubles she has to overcome. Even if this novel never sees the light of day, she has brightened my life, and all the hours I spend on it are just the token, the minor entrance fee into her life.
That said, I’ve got to get her back up off the carpet. I’ll see you later.
I think both fiction and programming are similar in that you kind of start from scratch and you craft away and after a while you end up (hopefully) with something interesting.You seem to enjoy writing now more than programming and that is fine, but I do not see how it is really all that different. It is like painting and sculpting. Different media, but same kind of process, a creative process.