Wading in the Velvet Sea

Stephen King has this great little introduction to his short story collection “Skeleton Crew”. I’ll paraphrase, since I’m too lazy to look it up. He describes how, early in his career, a lot of people met him and said, “You know, I’ve always wanted to write.” He would smile brightly back and say, “You know, I’ve always wanted to do brain surgery.” The person would get confused. King’s point: if you want to write, you write. Period. Unlike brain surgery, there’s nothing stopping you from doing it. No one will die if you do it badly, which is a good thing, since the death toll in 2002 from my verbiage would have been catastrophic.

Writing’s like most things: the more you do it, the better you are at it. You have to be truly moronic to not be a better writer after 910,000 words, unless you just wrote the same ten-word sentence 91,000 times. I’ve learned more about writing out here than I ever did in college, which isn’t so much a testament to the quality of my education then so much as the practical application now. I wrote maybe 200,000 words total in college over four years and 32 classes…quite a bit, but around one-quarter of what I’ve done since. Think about the first five people you slept with…then think about the next twenty. Weren’t you that much more awesome in the sack by #25? What? You haven’t made it to 25? Sheesh. Prude.

What I’ve learned I won’t break down, since these rules only apply to me and the pseudo-“style” I have. My style bears a striking resemblance to “being drunk in a bar and not letting the other person into the conversation and generally disapproving of any opinion other than my own”, but I have a lot of experience in this, so I play to my strengths. Much easier to go with the flow that swim upstream. Ask the salmon. You can’t write nearly a million words if most of them are laboriously produced. But if you write enough, you can throw in phrases like “laboriously produced” and sound pissah smaht, so there’s an upside to everything.

About 15 months ago, Tony Pierce came up with what’s now, in some circles, a seminal guide on how to blog. Like most things he writes, it’s cool and funny and makes so much sense you kick yourself for not thinking of it first. I dig Tony’s site not because I agree with everything he says, but I enjoy the way he says them. His prodigious output is tied in clearly with his love of the written word and language and expressing himself in as honest a way as possible. Ironically, this doesn’t mean he’s always honest: thus the “nothing in hear is true” mantra oft repeated on his site. But what’s written comes from an honest place, a true place, an artistic place, a place I try to reside in as often as possible out here.

Doesn’t much matter what The Girl’s name is or how we met or when we met or what I had for dinner last night or how long my commute is or the name of my cousin getting married this October. Doesn’t matter if I make up arguments or fabricate excuses or invent imaginary friends or tell 101 lies an entry. Telling lies and telling truths are not mutually exclusive, least not out here. I know it would be easier if that were not the case but that’s the way this particular cookie crumbles. It would be much easier to have a nice, clean set of instructions or an easy-to-read roadmap or a comparative chart where A always equaled 1 but none of these things represent what writing can do.

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…well, that’s for my real-life interactions with friends and family. (And when I have to testify under oath in a court of law. That too.) It’s not for a website of writing meant to entertain and engage. This isn’t the equivalent of an Alanis Morrisette record. This is no way resembles rain on your wedding day. It’s a mishmash of truth, lies, and the grey middle-ground that inhabits 90% of what everyone says or does anyways. No way I could ever be 100% truthful and honest even if I wanted to be. Too much partiality, too much blindness, too much bias, too much imperfection. Least I'm up front about that.

I’d like to think people who like my stuff like it for the reason they like his: for the recognition of some sort of fierce intelligence behind the bullshit. Don’t mean to use “bullshit” in any way shape or form but the smokescreen we occasionally put up in the forms of voices, irony, parody, fiction, and any and all other forms or non-veracity that yet yield truth amidst the lies. And yea, I’m applying “fierce intelligence” to myself but Jesus Christ, I have a website branded with my own name filled with my own words: ego out here has never been a problem. I don’t care if you ever know what’s going on in my head, so long as you know there’s at least something going on. I’d like to think if you visit here on a semi-regular basis, you know that already.

It’s funny, cuz this whole entry was going to be about “words I hate” and lo and behold, here we are some 950 words in and nary a joke about “moist” or “nummy”, two words that shake me to my core in different yet equally violent ways. Oh well. If 900 other words had to come out instead, it’s my obligation to let them pour out. Writing shouldn’t feel like work. If anything, it’s getting out of your own way. One of the many lessons I’ve learned over the last 910,950 words. More than two-thirds of what I write either deviates from what I set out to write or is created spontaneously after the painful process of getting that first sentence on my screen. That means I’m either really successful at getting out of my own way or I’m every writing professor’s worst nightmare. I’ll leave it up to people smarter than me to figure it out.

In short, it’s work, but shouldn’t FEEL like work. And it’s always a work in progress. Approaching a million or so words worth of work. (Is it worth it? Let me work it. I put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it. I’m feelin’ ya, Missy.) A million misdirections, a million truths, all wrapped up in a messy bundle. Just like life, that way.