I call myself a writer because people like labels and that one seems to fit. But like a lot of mostly unsuccessful people wearing the “Hello My Name Is…Writer” nametag, I spend much more time thinking about writing, distracting myself from writing, organizing music to underscore my writing, concocting snacks to be consumed while writing and answering emails (which is not actually writing) than I do actually, ahem, writing.
Don’t get me wrong. I write a lot.
It’s just not enough.
How do I know?
I’m not as good as I want to be yet.
So I keep writing (and doing all those other things that aren’t writing) and worrying that what I’m writing isn’t the right thing to be writing, or that it will only appeal to me, or that it literally makes no sense and when I die unexpectedly at a train crossing my family will find the short story on my computer about two guys dressing up a donkey like a mailman and say, “Honestly, it’s probably better for everyone that he’s dead.”
Because writing is lonely. There’s no audience to tell you you’re right or that you’re funny or meaningful or that you shouldn’t stop immediately and spend your afternoon googling miraculous dolphin rescues instead of, ahem, writing. So that part of you that thinks you’re special enough to make art with a blank screen, a Qwerty keyboard, and a point-of-view, gets constantly visited by that lone heckler, the guy sleeping in the back of the empty theatre who just wants to jerk off and sleep and concoct snacks to be consumed while jerking off and sleeping.
You have to punch that guy in the face. Every five minutes. Because he won’t stay down. No matter how many times you knock him out, he comes right back laughing and grunting and shouting things like “You’re a cliché!” and “You’ll never be good enough!” and “Twitter never stops!”
And on the bad days, that guy wins. Instead of fighting, I watch old episodes of Modern Family on DVR and clean the bathtub and consolidate the Genre tags on my iTunes library. And later that night I perform fleeting comedy for an actual audience and congratulate myself for making pretty flames with flash paper.
But on the good days, I type with one hand and punch with the other and I struggle forward, out-of-breath and ragged getting stronger and stronger. And sometimes it’s exhilarating and sometimes it’s just exhausting, but it always tastes like scotch on the rocks.
Of course, no one ever knows (or really even cares) if I push forward into the wilderness or if I stop and dust the fake flowers in the windowsill. The rest of the world just goes on and on. Because Twitter never stops. And the only people here to witness my victories and my defeats are me and that part of me that would rather be playing Angry Birds.
The truth is I don’t write enough.
How do I know?
Because I should be working on my novel and I wrote this instead.
