As you can see below, I saw some (all?) of the works of Shakespeare last night in the park. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of seeing the same three actors plus a bevy of amateurs perform The Taming of the Shrew in its full form.
I subscribe to The New Yorker and Wired, and while they are far different types of writing and the topics rarely overlap, each issue is filled with excellent writers writing about interesting subjects. I read about 80% of all long-form articles in the New Yorker and typically read Wired cover to cover.
And it turns out that reading all of this – plus the books and quarterlies and blogs that I occasionally manage to fit in – has a detrimental impact on my confidence as a writer. It might be that I have the ability to write, it might be that I could say something of value in a manner that isn’t blatantly amateurish in quality, but the bevy of good literature I read becomes an obstacle to overcome.
True I learn and the words I do write are immensely improved simply by the quality of literature I regularly expose myself to.
But that’s just it – I read lots of incredibly good literature. Just like with films (and my wife and friends will tell you that I’m a big film snob), if given a choice I will avoid any and all bad writing because there is so much good writing that I’ve never even read. And that really bothers me.
But this snobbish choice of mine – to avoid bad writing so I can explore more of the good – serves to cripple my fingers when presented with a blank page, an open document or a blank blog entry box. I just cannot bring myself to create bad writing.
These days my only strength as a writer is my complete willingness to throw a sentence out. Except I throw EVERY sentence out. I start down one path, then a few paragraphs in decide it’s cliché. So I try from a different point of view. But it’s cliché too.
Cliché, I am increasingly being forced to admit, is simply a blindness to the fact that you are not revolutionary. Yes, what I am doing has been done before. Yes, what I am writing resembles other people’s writing – it turns out English sentences have only so many forms that actually make grammatical sense. No, my name is not David Foster Wallace. Or Flannery O’Connor. Or whomever the author is that I am excited about at the time.
And if I could grasp this glimmer of wisdom like an umbrella, open it up and step under it, I would find that it just might protect me from this insidious desire to be a genius.
But no, no, why would I embrace wisdom? My response is a synthesis of resignation and frustration – a tendency to spew sarcasm and snarkiness and cynicism. So I twitter a lot of smart aleck remarks and push peoples buttons with my blog posts and facebook statuses but meanwhile, have no body of work that actually tests the idea that I have an ability to write. Thus my epiphany.
I have become a really pretentious troll. And frankly, I am ashamed.
My modus operandi in “real life” is happiness, exuberance, passion, and a constant curiosity. And if you’ve found that in my online persona, well I applaud you because obviously you’re reading between the lines of what I say into, wait, no. I don’t applaud you. Rather I’m worried about you because you are obviously crazy.
Will this change now? I hope so. I really do. The thing is, and this is ultimately what I was getting at with the title of this post – I want to write well, and when I write now I am not well, and thus what i write is not good.
Here’s hoping that changes. Blogging is hard, but I think what is even harder – and what has kept me from doing it the most is how finding worthwhile, interesting subjects I can write about in a constructive, interesting manner is much harder than being a sarcastic cynic.
I know I’ll never be Shakespeare, and I have no long-term goal of writing in the New Yorker or Wired or really even being published at all, but my intention with this blog is attempting to add to the bevy of good writing that is available for you to read so that should you decide to read it, your time at wnstn.com might be worthwhile.