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Amigos w/ Common Interests
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So someone asks me to look at something and as I'm looking I run into something else interesting and from there I spot a name I think I know and click and it's not the same person but now I'm in a totally different space and reading about their world and that's why I love the Web.
And then I see the words, "...because I love writing."
I stop. It's as if I have hit another planet. It's a completely surreal moment where I stare at his words and think "wow, he really means that."
I write because I have to, because I feel incomplete without it, because I have to somewhere, somehow, scribble my initials on the damned tree so that someone else will know I've been there. I don't claim to understand it, I don't claim to defend it. I write.
And god, but I hate it. There, I said it.
I hate writing. I hate wanting to do it, I hate forcing myself to put the words on paper, I hate staring at a blank page, I hate the traces of an idea in my mind and more than anything else I hate the lack of any idea at all.
I love having written, don't get me wrong. I love it when those words are down on paper and I can point at them and say "I wrote that." I would just like them to spontaneously appear, without any interference on my part.
Writing, sitting down and putting those words, these words on paper, that's a different story altogether.
The standard scenario, for me, is as follows:
I open up some type of document. My journal, a word processor, notepad, whatever. I stare at it. I light a cigarette.
A few minutes pass.
I finish the cigarette and write a couple words. A voice in my mind explains to me that they are completely banal words, utterly without value, and that I could have scrubbed the oven clean in the same amount of time and at least have done some sort of good.
I light another cigarette.
I write another sentence and the voice starts up again, explaining in very simple terms that I am wasting my time. And that it is shocking that I think that anyone would have the vaguest interest in what I say. And that I shouldn't even consider writing about a car if I don't know how to spell carbuerator and if I were a real writer I wouldn't need a dictionary.
I stub out the cigarette and stare out the window. It's getting dark. My son wanders in and asks me what I am doing.
"I'm writing," I tell him. I can feel his eyes on my screen, on the 12 words that I've written.
"Can I read it when you are done?"
It brings a smile to my face, he is confident that I will finish. I nod and light a cigarette.
2000 words later I'm gasping for breath and out of cigarettes and still that voice is there asking me what the hell I am wasting my time for.
Forgive me, but this is not my idea of fun.
My words define me. They remind me of who I am. Sometimes they are about me, often they are about who I am not. Printed text, for me, has an honesty that spoken words lack. After a month of not writing, I have a vague feeling of becoming undefined, as if I'm going fuzzy around the edges.
I write. I write to clutch onto who I am. When I am lucky, something comes out of it and I feel a light chill and I know I'm on to something. If I'm especially lucky, I find it and I look at the words and nod and say "this is true." And I'm in the wonderful world of having written, which I adore.
But, honestly. The writing bit.
Are there really people that enjoy it? |
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