Okay, so more than one month since I've last done this means I'm officially slacking or unofficially stumped for original thought.
And here's what I think about that: slacking, in whatever sense of the word, is purely a situational and relative conundrum. What I mean is, what I may choose to be dragged down or distracted by might just add up to be another man's inspiration. So maybe these winter blues are beating the hell out of the sliver of my brain that remains creative, while the guy next to me can't get enough of these dreary skies and freezing temperatures.
Well, screw it, because original thought also chalks up to only being who said what and when they said it and what it meant for the time and what it meant later, if anything at all. So you might as well say whatever you want whenever you feel like it because whether it's a repeat or the first words ever spoken, someone has said it, someone will say it, so if it's how you feel, you might as well make one of those someones be you.
So my thoughts are still occasionally boring and I'm probably still shirking my personal responsibility as writer (yes, even as I sit here, writing this) by ignoring some bigger problem to instead record my latest bumbling musings in a blog. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with blogging, I suppose.
But I've been thinking. Often times people have described blogging as a way to get your work out there, even if nobody wants it. Meaning, have all sects of the writing industry rejected your many attempts at publication? Have you had many resumes, samples, and submissions go unanswered? Well, then by all means, blog it out, because now even if it still remains unread, at least it's out there in the universe, for anyone who may or may not stumble across it and may or may not be interested in what you currently find outrageous or endearing. (If I may: they will not, and they do not, by any means, more often than not, give a damn. Any industry related to expression requires honesty, even with yourself. Myself. You understand.)
Not that I'm ungrateful to the phenomenon of the instantaneous name-in-print situation. But I find it confusing. And tragically unsatisfying. Google, as much as I adore you for your ability to find me photo after photo of polar bear cubs, you are not the New Yorker. May it be known now and forever, this is not an equal substitute.
Really, though. Talk to any writers. If fact, talk to real writers, if you are lucky enough to know any and can also find them emerged in sunlight, (most likely only to be smoking nervously or pacing angrily), long enough to catch them in conversation. They don't have time for this nonsense. They have schedules. Certain times of day that are religiously and rigorously dedicated to their craft. It is not a hobby or a maybe or a side project. It is their drive, it's their life's decision, it's their way of picking up the world, tossing it around for awhile in their own senses, and telling us about what they've seen.
They have lives, too. Ways and times of observing, of recording, the hunt-and-gather process, the storing up for the dry spells, the winters, the blockage that so inevitably and so often comes. They prepare themselves to do poorly, to wake up feeling congested and overtired, to be running late getting the kids to school, to start eating badly and feeling ornery. They will have days of awful indecision, where the plot stays senseless, the characters elusive, the worlds crashing and the words not coming. These are the more common days of being a writer.
But. Should you get one awful and perfect truth, one sentence circling itself beautifully, once a month, once a year, it should be savored as solid and lucky and solitarily wonderful, because for all any of us know, it will be the last time anything says that particular thing in such an unforgettable way.
That, or tomorrow you will be cheated by some beady-eyed onlooker and all that discovery and explanation will be wasted on everyone but you, you the only one who knows how it actually happened.
In fact, this is why I have to believe that so many of our writers could not stand the world, or instead loved it so much that it hurt them to observe it, to be a part of it, to try to explain it to everyone else who wasn't paying attention. It's the handful of creative types that have to escape the world, I think. For their sanity. Or to embrace where sanity does not matter. Having these worlds constantly collide is an overwhelming task to take on. If anything, they chose to make things simpler, to return to the beginning. To lie intelligently, to rewrite their histories and then leave us, to give us something important and turn away before we knew to thank them.
So it doesn't make much sense. And I feel that it isn't supposed to. If your mark is as big as a thumbprint, then it matters. And if it's out there on the internet and one person finds you astounding to the twelve who only shrugged, then it's important.
And if all you can do is express yourself in the dark, repeat someone else's mystery, wonder about the meaning of things, if it cures your insomnia or eases your mind, it is, and remains, vital to us all.
