A Reflection Consisting of Grammatical Errors.

A Story by JMPoach

A short confession based on both fact and fiction.

I'm a terrible writer. I'm not sure I can even call myself a writer. When I'm searching for some type of title or label to give myself I settle on writer. I'm a writer who doesn't write. I think about writing in my head. In there I create the whole narrative, even the prose. It's all there in my mind and it's perfect but I never actually write any of it. It disappears from my head almost instantly, never to return.

I should carry a notebook. I try to and I feel a certain contempt for myself. I'm just like all the other twenty somethings who want to write; I'm all of my friends. Their artistic potential makes me recoil, makes me cynical, makes me apathetic. So instead of writing, I sit. I think. Then I do absolutely nothing about it.

I don't have the correct tools to write, I sometimes think. I scoff at the idea of writing in Microsoft Word. Is that where writers work? How can a household tool that's so ubiquitous be used to create works of art? Is this act of me typing my thoughts creating art? There has to be much more to it. If there wasn't couldn't anybody just type down what they think and be regarded as a writer? Is that why I label myself a writer? Because I see it as a position that is completely natural and requires an extremely limited amount of effort on my part?

I could write in a journal or notebook and I often have in the past, but what happens to those entries? They sit on my desk shelf collecting dust and waiting to be lost and then someday completely cease to exist, never to be read after their frustrated conception.

I'd hate myself if I bought a typewriter to use. What a useless idealist I'd feel like then. I'd decide I was just someone yearning to feel a nostalgia for something they never even experienced. Useless. No, a typewriter would be too much.

I'm using TextEdit now because it isn't fancy, it's just blank and unassuming and I'm okay with this. Does it correct my grammar? I could never be a writer because I know nothing at all about grammar. Should I send my stories to my mother to proofread? Let her in on all of my deepest, ugly, repulsive thoughts? Should I let a friend read it and dictate how my sentences should be structured? I could by a book and teach myself all the things I was far too high to learn about in high school but it's probably just better to not write at all.

Have I made all of the wrong choices and now this is the consequence? Just a series of wrong turns in an ignorant and uninformed life. Why did I choose such a useless college degree? Filmmaking. No one needs a degree in film. None of the great filmmakers who pioneered the industry had a degree in filmmaking. Instead they had already lived their lives to such an extent that they were able to understand life and people. Me, I haven't lived my life at all. What do I know about life? Absolutely nothing. If I died tomorrow what would I have to say about the life I lived? Very little. That doesn't mean I'm going to change what I'm doing right now. No, I'll keep going. Why not? Maybe I'll accidentally end up living my life and then if I survive to be fifty years old I'll look back and laugh at my young unfulfilled self and shake my head. If only I knew in my twenties what would become of me. Maybe I'd find some sort of peace then. But would I then end up a different fifty year old from the one that I contacted. Would my knowledge completely change my path?

In High School a girl instant messaged me. She was the daughter of a judge. She told me that the last time I had asked her to be my girlfriend, she was immature, she only said no because I had done it over the internet. Maybe, now, two years later if I asked her again and of course this time in person, she'd say yes. I didn't pay much attention to it, I was fixated on someone else. But maybe I should have. Her best friend is a paralegal now. Maybe if I had fallen in love with her instead of the girl who was beaten by her father, I would have a more practical career. Perhaps our interactions would have changed me into a different person. We could have fallen in love so easily. She was beautiful, smart and for godssake her father was a judge. He was a humble civil servant, someone who actually made a difference. What am I? I'm not a man. I'm just a child trying to afford my rent through temp jobs and various manual labor. I've had no influence on society.

Someday I hope I'll sit down and write one of my ideas out, but for now I'm just a writer who doesn't write. Someone who has no knowledge of a craft they associate so closely with, I'm just a writer who never writes.