May 10, 2007
The Loneliness of the Something or Other

WRITERS are, as a breed, weird people. Seriously weird. I can say this because I am one, and I include myself in that diagnosis: I am extremely weird, a fact my sainted wife will no doubt happily attest to. Look at me: I waste time, energy, and money on a publication no one reads, and fill it with bullshit and then expect to be taken seriously. No wonder I drink. No matter how well-adjusted or otherwise successful a writer may appear—and some of us do manage a certain level of superficial, well-worn professorial cool—the fact is we've chosen to take our bizarre ideas and write them down, then attempt to make a ridiculously poor living from them.

And some of us insist on making this seem like some sort of courageous martyrdom, a painful and difficult challenge they engage in so they may gift the world with something. I've bitched about this before: Some writers insist on describing their writing as a difficult, skin-scraping exercise that forces them to drink too much, retreat from society, and appear in public looking dessicated and hungover (I, on the other hand, drink too much and always appear dessicated and hungover because I enjoy it). This is bullshit, of course: Writing is an activity where you sit in a comfy chair and make shit up. It's not always easy, and sure it can be challenging if you actually try to be original and creative, but to act like writing makes you sweat blood and develop serious health issues is just silly narcissism.

That doesn't mean that writing is simply a matter of drinking sixteen beers, drooling a thousand words onto the page, vomiting and sleeping for six days straight—wash, rinse, repeat (although that is how I do it, and let me tell you it wears you down a little, over decades). There are challenges, and difficulties. It's just that they are mainly mental, not physical, at least before they are pushed through the filter of an arrogant, self-centered writer—and trust me, we are all arrogant and self-centered. The other side of it are non-writers and their perception of the whole creative process. A lot of people pretty much assume you can write an entire novel in about six days, more or less working in your spare time, since you're just making shit up. While I prefer this attitude to the hair-shirt wearing concept that writing a novel is like giving birth to a barely enormous giant in the middle of a bramble patch, it's just as wildly inaccurate. There is effort involved, and there are challenges.

The main aspect of writing to keep in mind is that it's largely a solitary endeavor. Even if you're in a big room of people, you're just inside your own head, pecking away at an invisible concept that you can't be sure is a good one until you at least sketch out its bones. Even after you finish something, it's difficult to know whether it's any good or not—some of the worst pieces of shit I've ever written have actually sold for real American money, and some works I thought were fucking brilliant remain unloved, in a drawer, reviled and made fun of. Much like myself. Plus, sometimes when you're working on something with someone else, you bang out something you think is really good and they send it back torn to shreds. So you revise and try again, and again they hate it. And even if you take every note, and make every edit (god forbid) without disagreeing on a single thing, you can still count on getting more notes back, making you feel like you're living in some alternate universe.

But, let's not whine, because in the end, if you have any kind of commercial success as a writer, you are in a very real sense getting paid to make shit up. This ranks quite low on the Suck Job Scale. I'm not sure what's number one on the Suck Job Scale, but I imagine U.S. soldier or any other job where you can get blown to bits at any moment would be up there, or maybe spoogemopper at the local XXX theater. Or zine publisher. So you won't hear me complaining, even when I'm sitting in the office at 1AM, bleary-eyed and trying to suck a few more hundred coherent and entertaining words out of my soft, marinated brain while the fucking cats take turns jumping on top of me in a persistent if misguided attempt to make me feed them again before I go to bed (the cats, having been fed well and having at least 10% Mountain Cat genes in them, are fucking huge. Having Pierre, the eldest, stand on your chest and stare at you, licking his chops hungrily, is like having fucking Aslan sitting on top of you, berating you for being a silly Son of fucking Adam before he finally allows you to pet his satiny nose.

Wait, am I whining? Weird things happen when you live inside your own head too much. Someday I swear you read about a reclusive author eaten by his pet cats. Mark my words. They are hungry, and they outnumber me.

Of course, solitude is a good thing when you're writing, because most of your first ideas suck. They suck hard, and they suck loudly with a disgusting sort of wet sound that makes everyone around you nauseous. It's much better for these horrible ideas to just die, squealing, as you softly bury them in pencil shavings. Not only would the humiliation of people actually seeing my pathetic ideas forming like slow, obese children in my mind be too much for my shattered ego to bear, it would probably kill some people with sensitive souls. Much better for all this churning of crap to happen in private, and only the immense genius that results from a steady boiling be shown to the world. It's best for everyone.

Apparently I don't have time to write columns on a regular basis any more (can you believe I once did these every 2 weeks? It's madness!) but I have time to whine for a few hundred words. Which I somehow imagine you find amusing. Oh well. Suck it, readers!