Writing ain't cute

So I'm sitting in my apartment right now, sucking down another can of guarana and sugar swill, and I'm getting myself ready for a final intellectual purge as I grind my finals to a close and complete the final assignments of my undergraduate career. Tonight's flavor is fiction, and I've got a lot of it to write. As I fuel my increasingly-manic psyche with energy drink and pizza, I find myself looking back on a full year of writing workshops and I wonder . . .

Just what is writing to different people?

You can define it by pure mechanics, sure. It's taking a pen to a paper and producing ideas. But that's not real writing; that's the basics. That's comparing a baby's babble to a man's speech.

So what is it that drives people to be WRITERS, hmm? What makes them decide "I will do REAL writing. I will take a pen to paper and I will make something GREAT." What is it, hmm?

And I think back to my workshops, and I think about the people that probably WANTED to be writers. The people that do this as a choice, because writing is something they love and they want to be good at it. And I picture them working hard, and I picture them struggling, and ultimately I picture them as the ones that failed to impress me week after week.

Snobby? Maybe. But those writers that WANT to write - as much as I admire them - they're just inherently flawed. Or maybe they aren't flawed enough. Maybe they just have to work harder and push further than the rest of us. Maybe they're just missing something.

So I think about the writers that don't really WANT to write. I think about the writers that NEED to write. I think about the ones that blow me away - the ones that finish a chapter and it feels so good they need a cigarette. The ones that toss in their beds if their pens are pent up; the ones that fight it back like vomit.

People say that writing is something flowery and it isn't. People say it's something magical or inspired and it isn't. People think they can take it up because they want to and they can't.

Writing is an addiction. It's an escape. It's your dirty little habit. It's the drug problem that has your cousin sucking cocks in an alley. It's the scars on your girlfriend's thighs and the stains on your mattress.

Writing is a tumor; it's an ugly growth that throbs until it's drained and it gives you a headache when it rains.

Writing is your prayers, your orgasms, your gin, and your wife's black eye. Writing is the body in your trunk.

Writing is your nicotine. Writing is your flogging.

Writing is your best friend's sister when he's out of town.

There's nothing nice about. There's nothing charitable about it. It is what it is and you need it or you don't have it.


So now I'm going to write. Ignore what you hear and don't open the fucking door.