Writing About Writing (This One’s About Writing)

Are you gonna write about it, or just take it in?

So I accidentally deleted all my blog stuff.  I had 5 or 6 finished pieces in there.  The sad part is, I really didn’t care.  I shrugged my shoulders and chalked it up to being a careless doofus.   It was a fair amount of work and editing, about 4 to 5 thousand words or so, but something in me just treated it like discovering a new stain on an old shirt I was ready to throw out anyway.

            I’ve been writing since 1989.  I’ve has spurts where I wrote every day, and droughts where I avoided it for three months.  I always came back. I always come back.  I do not know why.  Writing is not very rewarding.  I’ve used it for two reasons.  First, on a personal level, it helped many times when I needed to extract the evil ooze out of my brain and make sense of it on paper.  I used it instead of weeping or curling into a ball in the corner.  It helped some, and it hurt some, too.  Writing time should be paused occasionally for human contact and reaching out to others for help.  But that was my deal.  I bled it dry.  That use, the diary and confessional part of journal writing, really doesn’t work for me anymore.

            The other reason is my favorite.  I am an idea generator.  I wrote before that it is in the search of The Big Idea that I sit down and type all the time…alone…sitting…for free.  I still get the ideas and they still make me happy.  I can write about anything on my mind, as long as I believe I am bringing something new to the argument or observation.  That’s what this blog is.  I get nothing from it other than a sense of accomplishment.  Even that is pretty fleeting.  I get about a dozen views per post, sometimes less than five.  Sometimes I feel that I really nailed something and I put a lot of extra time in the piece to make it funny or more clear, and it’s a whiff.  Essentially nobody reads it.

            I’m a smart guy.   If no one is reading your stuff after 20 years, there are only a few options you can settle on.  The first is the biggest culprit.  I don’t promote my writing or myself.   I tried to get things published, but I quit after it was rejected.  That is on me.  I don’t have the thick skin required.  Then there are the more stinging realizations.  I may very well suck, and/or no one is buying what I’m selling. 

            I can accept it if I suck.  I know when I’ve put it out there and really tried hard to hone and edit and get it right.  If my best isn’t very good, I can still say I tried.  But to accept that people just aren’t into what I writing about is a lot tougher to swallow.  It jabs my in the ribs and triggers my deepest insecurities; and I’m right back to being a boney little kid with cowlicks that no one paid attention to.  Maybe I’m too late with my stories and observations.  Somebody already wrote about that and I’m late to the party.  It could be that I’m trite and passé and naïve and I just don’t know it.  Or, maybe nobody gives a shit at all.

            If I had one of my dream time machines and was able to go back in time to correct this, I would show up in 1989 right after I read The Catcher In The Rye.  I would tell myself this:  “I know you have a lot to say, and you are ready to start writing about everything that comes to mind every day, but practice the guitar instead.  You won’t be famous, you won’t be rich, but you’ll be able to express yourself and you’ll get to be with other people and have fun.  Writing is lonely.”  Then I’d buy some Apple stock and get the hell out of there.

           Now I have to get back to filling a new file up with stuff.