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The average writer has approximately 49 phobias.
Phobia #1 Perpetual Aloneness
Phobia #2 I have already written my best work,
and it sucks.
The other 47 are not important.
Confident as one might outwardly seem,
just a little hint of success for a writer is a double-edged sword
tempered by jealousy, sorrow and introverted fear
that the only reason we didn't get hit by a truck this afternoon
is because someday we will contract an unpronouncable disease
with wonderful symptoms such as:
violent flatulence
and giggarooling
which is, of course a rolling giggle that produces excessive saliva.
And no one has friends that want to see that on their day off.
We watch the news out of some habit and perverted civic duty.
we look out the window and imagine
gloriously horrific emergencies when the sirens blow down
the street like a bus full of empty people.
and then there is the guilt, for which we medicate ourselves.
Yummy medicine which some of us take orally in the form of fermented potato juice.
Others, ....various drugs, sex, and emotional meltdowns.
American society tells us that it's all part of the natural creative process.
But is it?
Society says,
"in order to be creative (public regurgitation, poor personal hygiene drug & alcohol abuse) is a means to an end. Necessary to do the work. To reach the good stuff."
A really fucked up writer makes a good story great.
There are more desperate people in the world who want to be writers
than there are writers
who want to be
desperate
people.
For many of us writing is a way of making our mark in a world that is beyond our control. Staking claim to our interpretations of what we are watching.
so we can go back later, and verify that it was real. If only in the past.
Most people i think give up looking for themselves very early in life.
Right about the time they start talking. Establishing a comfortable pattern which will be repeated with subtle variations until the giggarooling ceases.
Not that writers don't have familiar patterns too.
We have Thousands. Each must be met to our satisfaction befor we can begin.
It's what drives us to panic
at the site of a fresh ream of paper.
"Oh, shit, i have to do the thing again."
Twitching eyelids, butterflies,
"i can't get comfortable in this fuckin' CHair!"
And i get up, wash my face for the third time in an hour, make another drink, smoke, find the spare pack of smokes (in case i lose track of this one) check the news, talk to myself for ten minutes before settling back down in front of the keyboard to
stare
at
it
forever.
This urge to follow the pattern
year after year
is that which propells one who might otherwise be percieved as merely pathetic
to the generally accepted position of Pathetic Writer.
so at least we get something.
if you write the same terrible shit, long enough,
people will have to at least acknowledge you have been writing the same terrible shit for years. Maybe your whole life. Cool.
The fear that this ream of paper will be the one that kills you
is perhaps a Pathetic Writer's greatest agony.
You purchase, intentionally,
this ungoldly amount of paper, bring it home
& as your walking with this
....weight under your arm you start thinking of your dog who died four years ago
the first person to really break your heart
that wrinkled nineth grade english teacher who encouraged you with
"you've got real talent" and flunked you anyway.
that weight under your arm feels like death.
but writing is better than a lover in this way,
when it leaves you
you know it will be back to love you again.
and you know you could never kill it, with say, a hammer....
even if you
really wanted to.
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