Posted by Doc_x9 at 66-188-221-79.roc.mn.charter.com on September 21, 2003 at 03:41:13:
You know, I may get flamed and I may be a non-entity here on these boards but why does writing suck so much?
I mean, I've been writing for awhile, nothing fancy, nothing for anyone but me to read. But the act and emotional rollar coaster is hard. I mean, really, it is hard.
I try to write the truth as it feels. I don't try to skip the hard...stuff but try to give the whole goddamn picture. To show the emotional impact of how much going through life is a series of dissappointment mixed with moments that it all just seems to click. How do you write about how a mended heart heals you for that one brief moment and then have the rest of the world just crash down on you?
Why is something that is so true and so clear become such a mess on the page? Some idea that you hold true, that is pure, become a tangle of lies and pumping up the truth? The constant frustration that comes with struggling for days at a time to write down the exact details of why something makes you, a character, another person feel. It's so draining. So draining in fact, I wonder how can anyone really keep their nose to the grindstone to finish even one story?
What is it..."write what you know." But isn't that just a case of self defeating cycle? I mean, and maybe I'm a little fucked up because of this, the truth is about pain. Like the pain of an orgasim, the pain of child labor, the pain of breaking your leg, or the pain of a broken heart, why is that so hard to write and come true. Anyone can write "she had a baby." But how can you write that in a way that is true and anyone reading can understand the emotional impact of labor, the tiredness that comes from it. How can you write about the fall of a good man?
"He fucked up and now people don't think of him as who he was, but they think of him as who he is now, after he fucked up." The fact of that is not truthful to the emotional value that is the fucked up man.
The bane of any writer, in all honesty, is the pain you inflict upon yourself to get to the truth of any matter. The emotional cost of putting yourself on the page, and revealing something hidden, from most, in you.
And I guess that is where I am now. At 2:30am I am frustrated, tired, drained from trying to nail the truth that is how i see it. And wanting that truth to be true.