Sixty-eight pages. Sixty-eight pages of my new novel.
Only two-hundred and thirty-two more (at least) to go.
It's frustrating, tedious. I can't truly enjoy the writing process when my body is weary after a full days work, and my mind is wheeling—hoping, anticipating a day when the story is done and I can determine if it really is worth something to anyone else.
Sixty-eight pages. Sixty-eight pages of my new novel.
Well, that's sixty-eight pages more then I had before.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Writing
I'm writing a book. I don't expect it to be the next Great American Novel, but I hope I manage to get it published. If I do, then I will be...validated, I suppose?
I long to write. It's my passion, the very notion that takes over my (nearly) every waking thought.
Bad day at work? Write about it. Funny Movie? Write about it. Tiny beetle crawling, slowly and timidly, up the wall behind me as I wait for the subway? Write about it.
The written word overtakes me. There is something about transfering life, in all of its fucked up, tragic, beauty onto a stark white page of nothingness, that is enticing - amazing, even.
The ability to create, to remove the human condition from the tangible to the intangible, is just short of astounding.
To allow a sheltered upper-class frat boy to find himself somewhere in the life story of a street walking prostitute. To let a portly, fifty-something divorcee identify with a self-confident, twenty-something model. To help a conservative Southern "Good Old Boy" see a tiny spark of his life experience in that of a long dead Black sharecropper.
Literature, in my opinion, is the link between them and us, was and is. Its the connection between one isolated human experience and the other.
A good writer, a talented one, is able to take that obscure experience of human life, whether it is clothed in the garments of a Superhero, a wicked villainess, a street urchin, a Fortune 500 executive, or a mad man, and make it relateable to all.
A good writer can transform, translate, transport.
He or she is able to reach deeply into that obscure part of all of us and find a connection, a key that unlocks our frozen facades of plastic smiles and meaningless words, to discover the real us...the genuineness behind the lies.
A good writer can connect us, one to the other, and help us to see life for all it truly is.
Am I good writer? Are my words worthy of being funneled out into society, for all to see?
I don't know. Most days I don't think so.
But maybe, if you're reading this, they are.
I long to write. It's my passion, the very notion that takes over my (nearly) every waking thought.
Bad day at work? Write about it. Funny Movie? Write about it. Tiny beetle crawling, slowly and timidly, up the wall behind me as I wait for the subway? Write about it.
The written word overtakes me. There is something about transfering life, in all of its fucked up, tragic, beauty onto a stark white page of nothingness, that is enticing - amazing, even.
The ability to create, to remove the human condition from the tangible to the intangible, is just short of astounding.
To allow a sheltered upper-class frat boy to find himself somewhere in the life story of a street walking prostitute. To let a portly, fifty-something divorcee identify with a self-confident, twenty-something model. To help a conservative Southern "Good Old Boy" see a tiny spark of his life experience in that of a long dead Black sharecropper.
Literature, in my opinion, is the link between them and us, was and is. Its the connection between one isolated human experience and the other.
A good writer, a talented one, is able to take that obscure experience of human life, whether it is clothed in the garments of a Superhero, a wicked villainess, a street urchin, a Fortune 500 executive, or a mad man, and make it relateable to all.
A good writer can transform, translate, transport.
He or she is able to reach deeply into that obscure part of all of us and find a connection, a key that unlocks our frozen facades of plastic smiles and meaningless words, to discover the real us...the genuineness behind the lies.
A good writer can connect us, one to the other, and help us to see life for all it truly is.
Am I good writer? Are my words worthy of being funneled out into society, for all to see?
I don't know. Most days I don't think so.
But maybe, if you're reading this, they are.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)