Writing and Work and Stuff
I had an unusually hard night at work tonight. I mean, Tuesdays are always busy as fuck because of the lobster special-but, we had the crowd for that, plus a big party booked. I don’t know if grueling is the right word, but it’s the first one that comes to mind.
So as usual I’m down there working and trying to get shit done, while also trying to think about what the fuck I’m going to write about at my blog tonight. This always happens up until about six o’clock when it starts getting busy and my blogging mind just shuts down to go on dishwasher mode. And I don’t mean I have a meditative “Zen” experience. There is not one fucking Zen thing about washing dishes, fetching supplies and prepping food in a restaurant. Anybody who tries to tell you they’ve found inner peace while busting suds is full of shit or trying to sell you dishwashing detergent. Probably both.
But before the massacre started and shit began to get way hairy in the dishpit-I came up with the idea that I’d write about writing. Because, despite my protestations to the contrary, somehow people have the quaint idea that since I write so much I might be a writer. Really, I’m not. I don’t even play a good one on my blog. However, it seemed like something to write about.
Thing is, for me-to write about writing would be like touching myself in front of a mirror. It’s just kind of selfy. I mean, given-there’s people who do it, and do it well (the writing about writing thing, I have no interest in what people do in the mirror really), but they’re usually people who do it professionally and/or who can do it really, really fucking well. I mean, there’s just that sort of unwritten, unspoken rule that says unless you’ve written a real, as in paper and ink, book or five..then you really aren’t qualified to pontificate on the creative process. Of course, once you have written a bunch of books or whatever then you can write about it all you want. Or you can stand in a mirror holding your body of work or whatever flips your twinkie. Cause after all, you wrote some fucking books. And I mean that in all earnestness. I mean, fuck, I can barely hold something in my swiss cheesed brain past 600 words.
Motherfuckers that write full on books worth of words deserve all the respect and acclaim they get-or most of the time don’t get. Nobody, when asked what they’re going to do on a Friday night replies “Party like a star writer.” Kids don’t read Jorge Luis Borges and then air-type fantasy labyrinthine tales on an imaginary Underwood. Well, at least I didn’t. I picked up a bass guitar and tried my hand at playing the punk rock in too many marginally unlistenable bands for over a decade. When I failed as a musician, then I began to write publicly. Funny thing, more people liked my ‘zine and like my blog than ever liked the gawdawful racket I made playing music. However, it was at least theoretically possible-to me at least-that I would “meet lots of girls” and have all sorts of people thinking I was a bitchen dude via looking surly and playing bass poorly. This type of thing never occurred to me with writing, and still doesn’t. But, the road to popular fame, or infamy even is more traveled by the bard then the scribe. Ironically, it’s the words of Darby Crash I find fitting to describe the work of the scribe: What we do is secret.
And it is. Even if doing it is nowhere near as hard as running 600 plates through a dishwashing machine and hand washing 300 pots and pans. Because lets face it-language is really an alchemists art. Words transmute concrete reality into abstracted symbols once again made real in the mind. When you make words, you make magic. Kind of like Bob Ross did with painting. And you can’t front on Bob Ross.
But don’t get this fucked up. I’m not sitting here saying I’m on some Gandalf shit with my writing. Not anymore than you are every time you make words. It’s a secret, but one nobody can tell you. Not me, not anybody with a writing blog, not any author, published on paper or otherwise. The only way you’ll ever know, the only way you’ll ever find out the secret is to just fucking write. It’ll come to you. And if it doesn’t, write about that too. Just keep hammering away. 600 or 60,000 words, whatever it takes.
And grammar? Fuck grammar. There I said it. I’ll say it again: Fuck grammar. Eventually you’ll figure that shit out and you won’t even have to know what the fuck a gerund is. By the way, what is a fucking gerund?
But if you’re one of those people who like the idea of being a writer more than you like writing then you’ll never know. You’ll never really pull the fucking rabbit out of the hat. Why anyone would fancy being a writer but not like to write is beyond me. That’s like wanting to drink like Jim Morrison but not writing fucked up poetry. I hear it happens though, the wanna-be a writer but not liking writing thing. Scroobius Pip said it so it has to be true. You can’t front on him, or Bob Ross.
So there. I wrote about writing. I hope I didn’t sound like a total fuckwit. I’m not claiming I’m a writer, and I’m not getting a big head thinking I know some shit now that a bunch of people have read my blog and a number of them told me I can write. It’s so totally not that. I’m trying to tell you-you can write. Just fucking go at it with all you’ve got. Or not. After all dish washing may not be the path to enlightenment, but I’m pretty sure slack is. Most importantly really-just have fun. Cause shit like work is a drag sometimes, and what’s really magical about wordmonkeying is that the creative process can just make a motherfucker feel better.
Oh fuk. I think I just gave up the secret.
When I set up my blog a few months ago one of the first things I did was to write ‘Why I Write’ and maybe that is a pretty self-indulgent thing to do, but then at 33 I’d never done anything like blogging (or even much writing) before and wanted to try and explain what had brought me to it now. I’m also not really one for rules, unwritten, unspoken or whatever.
Also I just want to add that the bit “(the writing about writing thing, I have no interest in what people do in the mirror really)” just made me snort coffee all over my laptop! x
Well, personal blogs in general are pretty self indulgent. But I think people are habitually socialized or whatever into believing their personal view on their own life or writing or whatnot, is uninteresting-and things like that are best left to “experts” like bona fide Authors and capital-W Writers. I think the opposite is more true, and for me it’s always better to read something by someone who has the cojones to come out and write about their own life and personal experiences. That was always the thing that attracted me most to ‘zines, and punk in general-the idea that anybody could do it and that everyones efforts had intrinsic value-outside, and above, value as a cultural commodity peddled by experts.
I didn’t really start writing very much until I was in my twenties. I started off on some ‘zines I never finished, then I read Get in The Van by Rollins and decided my horrible band needed documenting. Then I decided that my heroin use needed documenting. Then I went to prison and I had nothing better to do so I wrote all the time. So, actually I probably shouldn’t have started writing until I was at least 33 too.
Actually, I’m sure some people would say I should wait another ten years till I’m fifty to write. Sometimes I would have to agree. I mean, the sleep deficit I’ve accumulated just with this blog alone is staggering.
Hope your laptop didn’t bork out from the loosed coffee.
This is a really good piece, dude. I’ve been getting a kick out of you fighting this writer label. Squirm as you might, I say if the shoe fits…So if you’re trying to tell me that you can bang out all this good writing, but that somehow you’re more of a prep cook/ dishwasher instead, you might have mistaken me as some bumpkin from the country. Your sleep deprivation, of which I can testify to, is a monument to your dedication to your Art. hahahaha! You are a writer, Dave, along with a hell of a lot more things, but still…a writer is one of them. The sage advice I can bestow from my 10 extra years on the planet, young man, is Deal With It. You’re a writer.
I agree with the last comment and couldn’t have said it better. I think you’re a natural writer – like the storytellers you met inside. I can tell this, why? I’ve been writing for about twenty years. I write everyday. Sometimes I even do it if I’m not being paid to. (like most of last year!) And so, I know one when I see one. I spy with my writer’s eye, something beginning with… YOU!
But hey, no need to get trippy. You’re a writer, so what? I know a lot of writers and some of them are twats!
)
I like your words because they convey a sense of your humanity. So just keep on doing what you’re doing. (When you’re dead someone will compile and edit it all and probably make some money from it!
On the subject of writing.
Ultimately, I think talking about writing is boring. Writing about writing is… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
What’s that? Yeah. Coffee please. And btw, I do it because it keeps me sane and its the only thing that scratches the bastard itch in my soul.
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