I can fuckin’ write.
(And so can you, probably.)
Here’s the thing — just a short note — reading back stuff (buku stuff from my past, recent and ancient) I come across and find some turn of phrase, some eloquent flourish of words I may have (yeah it was me) penned in the past, and I think, shit, I wrote that? Daayamn, that’s not half bad.
Like that flash of gold at the bottom of a pan, black sand slipping to the side, water’s ripple urging the skur of tans-and-blacks to move out-the-way. There! Yellow and stunning. That’s the feeling when you read something you wrote that just frickin’ sings. You wrote that. I wrote that. And it was poetry in prose. Pitchers of pulchritude in pottery.
It worked. (And worked well.)
Those glimmers of talent are everything. Absolutely everything, to a grub of a writer. Am I any good? Is this worth all the bloody trouble? Is anyone ever going to read me? I should quit — right?
Yes. Yes. Yes. No.
The end of all this? Write for yourself. If someday you come back and read what you writ, ages ago, and smile, chuckle or — if you’re cosmically good, drop a tear — then it will have all been worth it.
Anonymole - apocryphal agitators 
I feel like my older stuff is so lame. Of course, in the moment, I thought it was genius. I’d like to think that all of this is because I am learning and evolving. If I frown upon something I wrote years back, it must mean that I’m better at it now. Right? Riiiiight?
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And… Nothing is every truly done, when it’s all digital. Don’t like what you wrote in 2010, edit it.
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True, true.
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Absolutely true. Good motivation. There’s people out there turning writing into gold. (Apologies to John and Stevie).
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This is so true.
Old writing, now forgotten — how can it be?
My whole ‘Geist’ was involved at the time to the point where it left me.
And maybe that is the purpose of writing. To write until every atom of feeling around that thought has been liberated. There can be an agony of releasing those thoughts into the constraint vestibule of words as we seek to decorate our expression.
Then, when you come upon those words one day again you recapture that spirit as fresh and alive as then.
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I like that. Documenting one’s spirit of expression to hopefully return and relive it.
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And some days you could be Steinbeck and trash keeps chewing up trees and even the pull yourself up by the bootstraps you know is true just can’t kick the Lone Ranger of why the fuck bother with any of it, you know? All the be nice to girls and kiss Cinderella and respect the institutions cultural and moral and physical and…Why? Cheap shit moral and physical and cultural gets a pass while we take everything so seriously. Girls just wanna have fun with dumbasses with toys, publishers want cardboard pablum, instant gratification beats becoming a craftsperson. Likes trump talent, tits still sell and sequels beat creativity. So yeah. Write for yourself. Just leave “because nobody else gives a fuck” off when you look in the mirror. Keeps your smile brighter. Trust me.
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Just finished reading The Dog Stars – Peter Heller. Unconventional format. I guess that is a grown up dystopian novel. (as is The Road, Alas Babylon, Earth Abides…)
Maybe I could try writing something old and grungy, take off my muzzle of propriety, see if I can write like an adult.
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Why? write your way and tell the tales that work for you. My suggestion was merely to whack everything that is not directly related to the STORY (I didn’t say characters) and then add back what you need so you stop telling us in more than an adverb how a character is feeling. Fitzgerald wrote ” X said, petulantly” which I thought very unmanly of him. And unneccessary. But it might have helped his readers. But it was one adverb, not a string of psycho motivation. That’s you, telling us the story, not letting us read it.
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