I’m the Proverbial Writing Hack
.
Look, I’m in my damn seventies, and it’s my fault. I planned for sixty-five, top; honestly, though, sixty seemed perfect. Here’s the problem, I hadn’t planned my ending, how, or where. I created myself with one ambition, do something amazing and get the hell out.
It happened this way only because I had nothing to write. When I write, I’m in control. But I fucked up. I started okay, in fact, it was truly satisfying, positive, irreducible, maybe, but without a plan to end me, I got decrepit. So, as you can rightly tell, I have to sit here pissed off and be old, worried of course, muddled all the time, and afraid that nothing I write makes sense anymore. It’s my fault; I own it.
It’s the story that has the power. I follow it, record it, live the character night and day — a story with no beginning, middle, or end. Just a mind crammed with ideas, visions, and all good stuff, so good I could dance with it, but I have no rhythm.
Here’s how such sweet stupidities happen. The writing stupidity, I mean, because being a curmudgeon takes no work at all. I need the thread of words running through my day, living in my mind, an imaginary person without a story. What will give me one? I identify with my person completely, deeply, even bodily, because this is the physical side of the story.
Me.
Trust me on this; it won’t help you, but if you can’t make the world into a story, you’ll go mad, or get real old, real quick. Relax, I figure everyone in heaven is always thirty years old anyway.
