Valamity!

I promised Leila I’d make a post tonight, but I got the vague idea that I’d attack the three ring binder containing doodle and bit of writing I ever scribbled down and transcribe some of it for you all to enjoy. I’ve spent too much time lately writing for my English final to really be in the mood for writing anything I’ll care to read later, and I thought I’d find an old gem that I could share. Unfortunately, most of it ranges from laughably bad to laughably corny, as evidenced by girlfriend having what I refer to as a gigglefit when I transcribed the second bit of writing that I had ever done. My complete inability to write dialogue that isn’t stilted and littered with things that I consider clever has unfortunately remained a hindrance to this day. I try to avoid it whenever possible. I write everyone as some weird version of how I talk or, at least, how I imagine I’d like to talk. Unfortunately, the hip white kid slang I tried to use in that particular bit of writing is rather…amusing…in retrospect. I’ll hang that one on the nail of 5th grade dorkery and wash my hands of it.

It’s weird, but I’m always a little amused that I can find some inkling of my current self in there. I like that the narrator is not some alien creature that I wrinkle my brow in consternation at. It’s me, you know. A me who didn’t know quite so many words and used commas far too often (another failing which has followed me through the years) and had slightly different, more juvenile obsessions. Even the obsessions have carried on a little. The quote in particular that Leila laughed at so much was related to my fondness for a certain nameless soda. I still drink that soda way too often, and if I can now at least manage a little sheepishness at my weakness for sugary swill, well, that doesn’t stop my compulsion to consume it. Sheepishness, by the by, is a word that I adore. Sheep are just neat creatures all around, aren’t they?

Anyway, I’ve gotten a handful of stories and poems transcribed onto my hard-drive, and Leila gave her approval to a song I wrote and described another short story as “not great, not bad,” so I can’t complain too much. I’m too wary of revealing the shocking depths of my bumbling ineptitude to share these little time capsules of my former selves, but it’s nice to see them anyway. They always read as like a not so subtle regurgitation of any particular obsession I had at that point, and it amuses me how easily Leila is able to pinpoint exactly the subject I was crudely aping. A Discworld parody about my adventures on the moon, a song about Freemasons that I wrote to the tune of the Decemberists’ Chimney Sweep, another that was influenced heavily by Modest Mouse (it seems to be mostly about death and suicide within a suburban family. I showed it my friend Blake a little after I wrote it and his reply was “wow, that’s a really depressing song.”), and a confused amalgamation of post-modern gibberish and Douglas Adams…I’ve also briefly done Kurt Vonnegut, Tim O’Brien and Neil Gaiman. My very first attempt to write was based on the Swiss Family Robinson, a book I absolutely adored and read constantly as a kid…Oh! At one point I even wrote some absolutely abysmal Star Wars fanfiction that might reside on a floppy disc somewhere…of course, the few pieces which by some miracle evaded a defining influence are hardly any better. My short, depressing story about a beating I should have take is unremarkable (although my father did read it years after I wrote it and started laughing uproariously about how miserable I made everything out to be), and my even shorter story about a man in a cafe is merely okay. The few people I showed it to always had the idea that I was writing the beginning of a story about a psychopath. I was to disoriented by that to continue writing it.

I am sadly derivative, friends, but I hope someday all those influences are filtered and pureed and homogenized into a style that I can call my own and not despise wholly. I feel that I give the occasional flash of something better, lurking behind my propensity for idioms and references and what I consider clever, witty wordplay, but I am always, always dissatisfied with my efforts to a very large degree. I have always felt a certain disingenuous flavor to all of my writing despite how thickly I attempted to layer it with verisimilitude. In fact, I think my writing excels only when I have some deeper, personal revelation which is ripped out of me in a burst of creativity. How I adore the burst…the heady rush of having something inside of you that you must bring to light…it’s very satisfying in a way that I am rarely satisfied. I’m aesthetically challenged, you know, but I do my best to make words dance. I wish I knew how to sustain that burst for the duration of even a short story, but I usually putter out after a few measly paragraphs. I have no notion of plot, only of stringing descriptions together and hoping I can find something for the characters to do next.

I would love to be an author. I don’t know what’s stopping me. I like writing. I adore writing, and writing well is the greatest source of satisfaction in my life besides the love and affection of my girlfriend. Laziness, perfectionism (an unseemly amount of the papers in the binder are faltering starts to stories I had envisioned. I will spend hours pain-stakingly churning out paragraphs that I will reread and revise with wild abandon the next day.), or lack of inspiration…it all leads to the same thing, and that’s my never getting it done. Maybe someday…

-I am a crazy person. -

~fin~

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