Now, I keep hearing about people who think they're writers. Maybe these are people who scribbled poetry in high school and think they can publish it. Maybe they're people who wrote short stories and submitted them to their school paper. I'm talking mostly about my generation here, be advised. Maybe these are those people who always seem to be talking about something they're working on, but never seem to have anything to show for it. Let me lay it on the line for you people.
I believe writers are born. Just as some people are born with a natural aptitude for baseball or drawing, or some girls are born to be models because they happen to have hips that fit the standard of their time, some people are born with a natural ability and passion for writing. I'm not being elitist here. I'm one of those people, but it doesn't really matter. Plenty of people who weren't born into the craft do very well at it regardless. There are plenty of big-name authors out there who didn't start out with any amazing talent, and who might not even have all that much love for what they do. These people sell. Hell, some of them are bestsellers, because I'm sorry--the mainstream audience has no taste. Dan Brown, recent golden boy of the media, the man Christians love to hate, is one of these people. He can't write, he just can't. The man could not write his way out of a hole in the ground (and isn't that a weird phrase? Just imagine someone trying to write their way out of a hole in the ground. Now start adding more fun things: "You couldn't write your way out of an eight-car collision!" "You couldn't write your way out of a hostage situation!" "You couldn't write your way out of a cauldron of boiling oil!" It gets better and better.). But guess what--nobody cares if he can't write, 'cause he's selling millions of books.
That's not really my point here, however. I want to talk about writer's block. Here I go, I'm gonna drop a train on you:
There's no such fucking thing.
Writer's block is a myth. It's a cop-out. It's a flimsy excuse writers use when they run out of everything else. No one who was born to be a writer is ever blocked.
You see those guys up there? The big guys, the ones you know? Stephen King is always the first to come to mind, but you can make your own list. Prolific, high-volume people who keep bookstores in business. Those guys have so many ideas rattling around in their heads every day that there is no way they'll ever write them all down, not if they live ten times their current span. These people can't be blocked. And neither can anyone who was born into the craft.
So what's that mean? What's that imply, when you're sitting there with a blank sheet of paper and nothing to say? It means one of two things. Either you weren't meant to be a writer, and anything you do is an uphill battle (in which case, hey, more power to ya, work at it and get good and I'll buy your stuff when it comes out in paperback.). Or you were meant to write, but you're just lazy.
This is hard for people to accept, and I understand that. The fact is that no one can be as intellectually lazy as a really smart person. I'm paraphrasing The Man here (Stephen King again... god damn, he's everywhere!) when I say that given half a chance, brilliant people would rather just ship their oars and dream. This means that writers, with their intellect and with that kneejerk cry, "You can't rush art!" are extremely likely to be extremely lazy. But the fact is that writing, and any other art, is not just an airy-fairy inspirational business of capturing words out of the air like butterflies when they land on your nose. No. Stop that. Don't do that. Don't do it, and don't depend on it. You have to treat any art like a job if you expect to get anything done. You have to take it seriously, dammit. I'm not saying ride your own ass, I'm saying--well, hell yes, I'm saying ride your own ass. You're never going to get anything done if you wait for the muse to descend, 'cause you know what? He's the laziest one of all. He's never gonna show up if you're hanging around waiting for him, he's gonna stay home and watch his goddamned Nascar. He knows damn well it's not him who has to put in the legwork. You want to be a writer, you do the work. You sit there and sweat over a blank piece of paper for two hours every day, or more, just to turn out a few crappy pages of drivel. You signed on for this, remember. But if you do that, if you put in the time, if you devote the effort, if you really commit to your art like you maybe want to be productive, then eventually the muse will get up off his ass and start dropping by. Mostly he won't be much help. Mostly he'll sit there and grunt and drop his cigar ashes on your rug. But he's allowed, you know, because that little man has what you want--magic. And he'll give it to you if he sees you trying.
It sucks, it does. The whole point of writing is to feel that buzz, when you're riding high on inspiration and the words are flowing, those days when you can get fifteen pages, those days when it feels good and you go back and read and the typos are terrible because your fingers couldn't keep up with your whizzing mind. And sometimes you can't do that. Sometimes you have to write in cold blood, when you second-guess every word and the paper has holes in it from your erasures, when the words seem dead and you finish up feeling tired and betrayed. But guess what (Quoting again'd!)? And this is a mantra for life, so repeat it to your little self, got it?
Sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.
Trust me on this one.
Judged: Good
QOR: 35% evil, 65% good.
posted by Rivaine # 1:14 PM 
