A Writer On Writing, Writing Because Writing, And Writing, Writing, Et Cetera

Therefore:

So youve done it. The novel is finished. Youre not ready to edit yet. Youve started something new but it is not hitting the spot. You cant just quit writing though. Writing is not like riding a bike. You take a day off and your brain turns to mush. The backspace button gets the most action and everything you put down is trite and stupid and something you already wrote. Probably something you wrote the last time writing became unpleasant. You pace around hoping to have a good idea. Maybe a short story or a poem or a screenplay. You mentally scroll through all of the ideas you have and all the projects you have started that went nowhere. You once again start writing that horror novel you have been thinking about for years. Once again it is so distasteful that you understand why Stephen King did so much cocaine in the beginning of his career. You remember that promise to yourself to write something your mom can read, but like rock and roll, the last thing you should be thinking of when writing anything is whether or not your mother would approve. So you start another project that goes nowhere, then another, then another. Suddenly a week has passed and you have seven new projects that are all nothing. You think, You know what, maybe I need a break? Thats the ticket, Ill finally relax, maybe get some sleep, catch up on the news and start needle point again. But then you go for a walk and think about it. Really think about it. Think about Easter and those ladies you were talking to on your aunts balcony who were saying that the only regret they had was that they didnt do the things they wanted to do when they could still do them. And they were not talking about travelling or reading the 100 great classics of all time. They were talking about you. About right now. About how life and time is limited for human beings like us and watching television and getting to bed early are not a good use of your time when you are at the peak of creativity. They were talking about how you get old regardless of who you think you are. They were talking about missing out on things they didn't feel like doing because they were tired or had work in the morning. They were not talking about saving money for retirement or working excessive hours now so you would somehow have more time on the other side of things. When you could relax. When you could finally get around to it. Whatever it is.

Death is abstract. It is both never and always. Life is the same way but in reverse. I dont know what happens when you bite it, but what I do know is that the older I get the slower I become. I spent all of my teenage years, my 20s and my 30s being spring loaded. Like a Collie dog. I sniffed all the trees. I chased all the cats. I drug my ass along all the grass and it felt great. I barked until I was soundless and when I got tired I took a nap. I did not consider the future because the future did not exist.

The future did exist and we are living in it. Here it is May when wasn't it only January like a few weeks ago? Think back to January, how slow were things then? And now that it almost summer? Hold your fucking horses Mother Earth! Whatever happened to spring? Whatever happened to the long days of waiting for summer? And then when summer came, whatever happened to the terrible pace we ripped through those days like an advent calendar that gave you chocolate after chocolate until the last day of summer when it gave you shit? Imagine those days though when you think about your future. If you were lucky enough to have such a structured life that things were fall school and then winter school and then spring school and then summer. And for three months you were given the freedom of nothing. The never and always of death as a child. Where everything was possible and nothing needed to be codified until the very last day of your freedom. And when that day came, the guillotine came down with it.

I am not trying to be depressing here. Time is what time is. Life is what life is. I sometimes think about this quote from somebody I dont remember talking about something I have no clue about, but it went exactly like this, "When you hear that somebody dies and you feel something, that means you are still alive." The statement is bunk. It is one of those try and prove a negative things that you cant do. It is meant to give you a guilt trip on top of a guilt trip. My guess is that it was Kurt Vonnegut or some such asshole who had some sort of reflexive feeling about something and instead of keeping it to himself, because it was surely a him/he, it was surely a dude that had the thought, said, Wow, profound, I should write that down. And then wrote that down. And ever since i read that, probably thirty years ago, I think about it. It didn't mean anything then. Thirty years the death of anyone I knew kicked me in the cunt like a donkey punch. I did not know how to process. Lorinda, Joe, Todd. Then when I was in my 20s, my dad, Brandon, Larae. Plus more, of course, I am from the great state of Wyoming where everyone drops dead all the time for no reason at all. My mom told me the other day the social studies teacher whos class I did not take because I had dropped out of school by then, the one that did a whole thing about the Vietnam War, because hed gone there and fought and it was a profound experience that changed his life, he died the other day when he was trying to get his boat out of Boysen Reservoir, he drowned, and there were people right there close enough to see but nobody saw anything. He just died and nobody bothered paying enough attention to do anything about it. Its not the worst way to go. Drowning. The guy had to be in his 80s or late 70s. He was famous around town because he would cry when he would tell the students what happened during the war.

And one day you will too be trying to get your fishing boat out of the freezing waters of Boysen Reservoir in late April and you will die. You will drown and somebody like me will only be able to process your death through the lense of somebody somewhere told them that you are only alive if you feel something when somebody dies. I will tell you, I felt nothing when my mom told me he died. Not because I dont care but because I didnt know the guy. Life is abstract that way. I am not heartless, I just feel the opposite way about death, I think, than most people do. Death is a Houdini Maneuver. A conjuring trick. We are all toddlers with object permanence issues. Every night we die. Sleep is a profound thing. Pain too. To be in pain, to suffer pain, that pain can stretch time? That sleep can cure pain? And what is death?

Death is a gatekeeper to a nothingness you will never recover from.

In conclusion, I started writing this missive because I wanted to help other artists feel better about not getting anything done. That all art is a sputter and we make moments of brilliance, but for most part everything is churning butter. Stick to it and eventually youll get something. If you dont, youre just flapping wet wood in a tank hoping for results and the results will only be bad smells and loud noises.

NOW GO OUT THERE AND GIVE IT YOUR ALL