On Writing

S: You shouldn't write in there. It's full of paint fumes.
M: It's been weeks since I've written anything remotely good. I'm kind of hoping the fumes will help.

"The second girl, the one without skinny legs turned out to be the far prettier of the two. This was not entirely true. She had sea green eyes, and small dark circles under her eyes, that were really more indicative of a lack of make up than of some deep seated unhappiness, or so he hoped. She wasn’t really prettier but she was more interesting, laughed more quickly. He generally wasn’t fond of girls who laughed quickly and chalked it up as a weakness of character. That wasn’t at all true, though he believed it to be true about himself. No. He actually liked it quite a lot, and who wouldn’t. It implied, a laugh, a sort of intimacy, an acknowledgment of a thing shared, the joy of an exchange of words or ideas that nothing else really did. People can often travel through the world without really knowing themselves. This is not particularly more or less true of our protagonist."

Most of it can't properly take place on the page. It's a poor simulacrum, poor mimesis, whatever floats your boat. The idea is to create a world, or a portion of a world and then let these characters inhabit that world. There are a variety of theories, but the one that the real auteurs, and I realize that the term is usually applied to film, but the one that these guys subscribe to is essentially letting these characters inhabit the world. That's the type of word they use, inhabit. I suppose metaphorically speaking we're talking like standing in a doctor's office, or your aunt's or whatever, I'm realizing that the value is lost because no one has fish tanks. Anyhow, standing there and watching the fish swim around and like inhabit their world, and then going back down to the page and writing down what they did. The problem is that people are way more complex than fish and watching them "inhabit," kind of a bull shit word, the world is itself, kind of bullshit. Though, in some ways the metaphor deepens, particularly if you excel at glass blowing and have made your very own fish tank, ie the environment in which the fish are swimming. Except the difference with writing is, and stop me if I'm boring you, I hate people who go on forever against all odds, if I get lost on a mountain and have to cut off my leg and eat it to survive it's best to leave the search party at home, because I'm a goner. What was I saying? Oh, yes. The difference with writing is that the contours of the fish bowl are constantly in flux. It would be like watching a fish bowl that you could magically change with a wave of your hands, and then watching how the fish react to the changing environment. This broke down so long ago. The point is, it's not easy, and that's why I don't do it a lot. And neither is keeping fish alive, which is why so few people have aquariums I suppose. The metaphor will not go quietly into the night. 

The whole complaining about writing is a virulent trope anyhow. The only people interested in hearing someone else whine about how hard it is to write are other writers. And I use the term loosely, obviously. I hope that's at least clear. Anyhow, your average lay person, and I don't use the term in a derogatory manner, I think another way of putting it would be well-adjusted person, doesn't really give a damn to read about someone else struggling to create meaningful dialogue or a believable scene. It's a non sequitur for them. I mean, I get it. We wouldn't all love the grocery store if every clerk we encountered, or half of them, was talking about how effing hard it was to be bagging groceries. We'd say, "Thank you very much sir, but do you mind not crushing the loaf of bread." It would get supremely old. We expect of our workers that they do their job and preferably do it well. Anyhow, this latter lot wants, I'll admit fairly, just to read something stirring or interesting without all the interpolations about how hard it is to write something stirring or interesting. Or they think that writing isn't all that hard, and that if they sat down they'd churn out a book or two in a year's time that would be at least passable if not downright good. 

Which, let's be honest here: eff them. Because they're probably wrong, and will be spending incredible amounts of time talking with their new writer friends or boring old friends with just how hard it is to write something compelling and interesting and that sticks to a plot and has believable characters etc. Or, they'll be the type to press on ahead despite the obstacles and complete something so monstrously awful that only very close members of their family will read it and like it. Or, worst of all, perhaps they'd prove to be talented at it and not find it insanely hard but some sort of calling that had long eluded them, like hearing the hooting of an owl in the night, and walking out the front door and discovering him sitting in the tree outside your window. The metaphor is poor, but you see that's the sort of thing  you're constantly running up against, and you either have to dip back and fix the damn thing or press ahead. And if you're to fix the metaphor, it indeed it's a metaphor, about the owl, than are you going to correct all the grammar mistakes as well. What about restructuring the first portion of the argument so that the fish bit doesn't go on so long? You see? And if they're talented than that's just one more fish swimming in an ever decreasing aquarium, so, eff them. 

Of course, the whole mental self-loathing thing is the sort of thing that writers, again that term, let's be honest here, scribblers, kind of feed off. It is rare that extremely well adjusted and happy folks stay up half the night creating lives of unhappy people. But I digress. The real point is that scribblers scribbling about scribbling is their way of getting to feel productive without actually being productive. That is, in less they attain a certain degree of fame or notoriety, or through the vagaries of life some fame. Well then it is entirely possible to spend/waste a good deal of people's time writing about not writing. It's a noble industry with thousands of forebears. (I've no earthly clue about forebears, I want it to be forebearers, but I've sworn off Google for the rough draft of this particular scribble, and I'm now instead picturing four bears holding some sort of scroll with stylized Japanese calligraphy on it). I fear I've somehow muddled this evening up as well. Unintentionally, I assure you. If you cannot forgive me for wasting your time out of the goodness of your heart, forgive at least, the meanderings of a mind made strange by paint fumes, made dull by tiredness, and made empty by long practice. 

(A good deal of relevant stuff is left out of this piece, which is also the sort of thing that any scribbler must consider. It's tempting to include a history of scribbling, use words like textual and medium, talk about the vicissitudes of language or of thought represented as text etc. but a wise professor once told me that an essay can only be about one thing, and as this isn't an essay, but a piece of fiction, I'll take his advice this one time).