To Write or Not to Write

Never take on words without toilet paper handy

There's a lot of writing talk on here, even from the so-called professionals who should know better. They're offering classes, conducting seminars, talking technique, all kinds of action. Can you teach someone how to fuck? If you can't, you can't teach them how to write either.  The one good thing about discussing writing is that it keeps you from the difficult, uncertain, hold your nose and jump off the high board truth of actually doing it—or is that the bad thing? Oy, now I sound like an old sourpuss. What do I care if people want to chop it up about microfiction or have ten tips for the memoirist? God bless. Knock yourselves out. In fact, I'm guilty as well--A few of weeks back I wrote something about thinking my joy gets on the page. You know what? I disown this entire paragraph. I'm right there with you; a proud member of the Writer's Guild, both literally and figuratively. 

I didn't even come here to talk about writing. I came to talk about not writing. How the way I know I'm a writer is not because of what happens when I write, but because of what happens when I don't. I get queasy. I feel lost and wander around muttering to myself. I get irritable in my soul. And it doesn't matter how important what I am doing instead is, if my ass isn't in that chair I feel like I’m up to no good. (What are you thinking getting this lump in your chest tested for cancer? Go home and write, you slacker!)

In fact, I have to plan all my so-called real-life shit for the afternoon because "real life" isn't real to me, writing is. If I haven't spent my morning struggling with language, I am useless to myself and others. And I want to get out of it, believe me. Love to lick the sweet lozenge of procrastination, steep myself in the vile joys of resistance, inflict self-harm by refusing the call. I have reached the point where I don't even take my emotional condition seriously if I haven't done my work. If I haven't written, I could win the lottery, get a sloppy blowjob from Penelope Cruz, and have the ghost of Henry Miller appear in my office and tell me I'm the second coming, and I’d still feel the gnawing ache of self-abandonment.

Everything changed when I got sober. When I was using, addiction took the brunt of my shame. I had bigger problems than how many pages I was piling, and could tell myself that my great era of productivity would come when I was clean. Well, I can’t tell myself that no more. “The road gets narrower” as they say, and it’s gotten real slim for me. There is no drug, no food, no sex, no mother's love or father's head-pat that can sooth me. Even the dopamine gush from a well-received Substack won’t quiet the storm inside. My mental health comes down to making words.

I'm dyslexic. I could try to spell “necessary” and not get it right ‘til next Tuesday. I didn't go to college and barely went to high school. I am not a great reader and was a downright bad reader as a youngster, nor am I one of those introverted kids who found solace in books, and always knew they wanted to be a writer. It was just something I could do, and whenever I was able to slow myself down enough to do it, it came out pretty good. But I never would have guessed that it would be what I do to not go crazy, and that even these few hundred words could buy me a few hours of peace.

Writing is how I make a living. How I serve my purpose. How I stay sane. If I wake up and do my duty, little can go wrong in my life. Even when really bad shit happens, I'm like, “Well, at least, I did my pages or wrote a good scene.” That might sound kind of fucked-up and priority-screwy but that's how it is. I am happily under the illusion that I’m here for a reason, and that reason is to express myself with words. So far, the world has mostly played along.