not important, just depressing myself.
"Ah, the tyranny of the blank screen."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Writer's block, right? Always writer's block. Isn't it strange how so many people seem to come down with it when they are expected to produce something for actual reading and evaluation?"
"I'm not sure what you mean."
"It's just that everyone fancies themselves a writer at heart. Everyone's got that burgeoning beast that lies dormant in their chest, occasionally stirring to spur them into some creative maelstrom that absolutely demands to be expressed and manifest into something that people can see or hear or experience, and heap congratulations upon the creator until the beast goes back to sleep. Most feel those tugs from their subconscious start to make their way to the forebrain, and they imagine that one day, when they have the time, they'll set aside a few weeks and write. They'll rent a cozy cottage by a lake somewhere, sit in a fuzzy bath-robe in front of an old typewriter and bang out a story, just like Stephen King. They'll write the great American novel, get it done, check it off the list. They like to think that it's mainly for their own satisfaction, to create a wonderful little piece of literature to stamp their name on something that will outlast their own lifetime. They say it'll be for pleasure, but of course, deep down, everyone knows that their ultimate goal is to drop the manuscript nonchalantly on some agent or publisher's desk, a little 'oh, by the way, I was cleaning up the den the other day and ran across this old story I wrote…How about a look?" It will unquestionably be the hit of the century, the next Gatsby or Da Vinci Code. There will be an excited message on their machine when they get home explaining how much the publishers love their work and the unprecedented amount of money they're prepared to offer for it. Then another message detailing the movie option. And maybe best of all, the message they get to leave on their boss' machine at the electric company, letting them know it was great working for them but they probably wont be coming in to work tomorrow, there've got lunch with Spielberg and Lucas at 1; actually they probably wont be back at all, have a good life. Because they know they will.
Everyone thinks they're a writer. Eventually they'll quit their job and become Mort Rainey, be a charmingly eccentric recluse who sits at his typewriter by day and attends parties and conventions nights and weekends. And I mean, really, how hard could it be? Sure, Thompson, Hemingway, Plath,
"But I'm just writing a newspaper column."
"And it's hard, isn't it? You sit down and your candle goes out; all your impressive ideas scatter like cockroaches. You turn on the light, you turn your attention on them, and they flee. Your dreams of being a writer and getting six-digit checks from publishers and movie studios flow through your fingers like water. Maybe you never even had any ideas. You saw some good ones in books you've read and thought of clever variations on the themes. You spotted all the symbolism and metaphor, and of course the white whale was Ahab's search for God. You can weave a symbolic tapestry like Melville. You can peel back the flesh of the world and reveal its diabolical contrivances and patterns like Orwell. You can spin a concept on its head and pitch realistic characters into unreal tests of mettle like King. You can (God save us) create your own beautifully chthonic faux-middle-ages Middle-Earth. You'll write a few short stories to moderate reception in the major fiction magazines, and once you've figured out your niche you'll dominate the industry. It's pretty heart-breaking, isn't it? Sitting down at your desk and finding you have nothing to write. Trying your hardest to speak and never finding your voice. Desperately clinging to every last grain of sand that once made up your soaring childhood dreams as they slip through your fingers. You have nothing to say. Your prose is s contrived and pathetic as that of a fourth-grader. You can't seem to grasp simple notions of sentence structure, and you will never be able to capture realistic dialogue. Your characters talk like robots, when you haven't found every possible way of avoiding actual character interaction because you know on some level that you have no idea how to make them do just that. You can't think up natural conversations. Can't throw out witty phrases and comebacks. Half of what you put down is clichés from books and movies.
After a few bad attempts, after a few indefinite hiatuses to find your true muse, after many hours staring at a blank screen, after looking through so many books and seeing genius on the page and being completely unable to reproduce it, after so many tears shed onto the keyboard, you despair, and you plead and bargain with yourself to write, and be good, and f***ing think of something, you give up. The despair eats at you for a while but you find move on eventually. You have to. Because those blank pages burn into your soul, and you concede defeat. Time to find something else to be good at. You probably won't get famous or renowned or rich, but you can do a job. You can support yourself and a family and settle for the American dream. It's just too bad that it isn't your dream. 'Writers are born to write,' good ol' Steve King says, 'and if you don't got it, you don't got it. You're either a writer or you're not, and no amount of practice or crying or screaming at your computer will make you one.'
The cold, sad truth. Life is not fair. You're an Average Person, no special talents or abilities to speak of, and you're doomed to die a blue collar worker with a small home and a modest living, and a few years after you're buried no one outside of your immediate family will even know you existed. No one will lose themselves in your works, or draw revelation from your insights into the human condition, or laugh out loud and show their husband or wife that funny thing they just read.
Life is not fair, and our dreams are only that, if we don't have what it takes to pursue them. The percentage of people who aspire to authorship and actually get published is pathetically small. The percentage of those that make a decent living from their work is laughable. And the percentage of those so blessed as to be good enough to write a whole book, get it published, and sell- the percentage of those that actually ascend to notoriety, to critical acclaim and worldly fame, is like a shot glass poured into the ocean. The odds are astronomical. You will not be a famous writer. Might as well become an archaeologist and aspire to unearth the intact skeleton of an unknown species of dinosaur, and have it named after you."
"Well. Um, thanks."
"Anytime."
