About Writing But Turned On Its Head

A moment of inspiration in the midst of mental and creative stagnation.

This started off as me describing the art of writing but late at night, turned into something much different, and much better.

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I sip coffee the consistency of motor oil, listen to Beethoven and Dvorak, trying to think of something to write about but I can’t. I just want to put words on paper in some combination and permutation that is pleasing to the ear and mind and heart. I spend enough time doing this to be an expert on wanting to write. F**k Hemingway and Shakespeare, they don’t understand this s**t. But that is only an act of frustration and ignorance caused by creative stagnation. The best of writers are also most likely experts on wanting to write. I can’t think of any best sellers to write or great literary classics to compose. Just driveling bull s**t that seems to run together, covering the same topic and same span of time that I have existed in. More than that, it is all about me, and I hate selfish artists. Even now it is just me me me. No one else, no strange characters or goofy stories, not even anything imaginative or fresh. Just lines about frustration and wanting.

I am cursed with writing. For some damned reason I love it, and think about it constantly. For three years I have spent every moment writing, thinking about writing, or worrying about writing. Am I any good? Will anyone appreciate what I have to say? Do I say “I” too much? Am I avoiding passive voice? Creating fresh imagery? Staying away from cliché? Do I have any typos? A literary hypochondriac. I deserve a whole chapter in the DSM V. My section would be called, The Wannabe Writer, classified under conditions regarding hysteria and delusion. The symptoms would be chain smoking, heavy drinking, writer’s cramp, writer’s block, delusions of grandeur, hopeless depression, homosexuality, and a strange affinity with eccentricity. A recommended treatment would be a kick in the a*s, physical conditioning, a dose of codeine, and a removal of the patient from environments heavy with books.

And there is the other problem. I look at the books and stories of writers like O’Brien or Thompson, Camus or Orwell, Salinger or Fitzgerald and say to myself “this doesn’t look hard, I can write like this, I can do just as well as these hacks,” but no. There is some weird mystery to it all, like the only way to be good is to be born with it. Actually it is probably just to keep writing, then commit suicide or die in some literary fashion and let the masses eat up all the s**t they never wanted to read while you were alive. People are so fickle, so uninteresting and apparently I am one of them.

Then I think, “I just need to get out there and experience things, then write about them. Find something to write about.” But I am stuck here, at this s****y university in this tiny, backwards town, surrounded by uninteresting proles, and once again I am one of them. I need some inspiration, a shot in the arm of real, pure, creativity. Liquefied inspiration shot right into the cerebral cortex, or maybe just some drugs, that did the trick for plenty of writers.

I wish I could just give up the whole enterprise, the drive to write, the desire to write, but I am really in it now. A couple dozen essays, a novel, and a collection of s****y poems deep. Probably close to a hundred thousand words of straight nonsense all about how dark and terrible the world is, or how everything is flawed and I have the arrogance to think I know the problems, but if you pay close attention you’ll find I know all the problems but none of the solutions. I can turn a phrase, play with some interesting language, talk about truth and honesty, but I am lying to you all, all the time. I am no more a writer than a stenographer is a writer. I’m just one of several million uninspired miserable artists that think they can write, who look at authors before us and say “I wanna be just like them,” who start smoking and start drinking and think that that is how a best seller or a literary classic is made. Then there are those happy go lucky pricks who talk about natural beauty and how we should all just get along. That say if we only watched a few more sunsets then we would find something greater in life, something more satisfying. The Robert Frost types. All cute and receptive to the sickening optimism that we have ever been cursed to hear.

Writers are just broken people, who want attention for the terrible, or seemingly terrible, circumstances they live in, who wax philosophical as they drip with cynicism and contempt. Yeah, we think we are so great because we can combine fancy words in sentences and spin people around enough to think that we are worth anything more than nothing. Take my advice, which is probably difficult at this point, if anyone tells you they are a writer, take what ever bottle of liquor they are drinking and crack them over the head with it. The world deserves every bit of help you can give it. So do your duty and convince a writer to get a real job.