On the Raw: When Marching on Becomes an Act of Defiance…
I’ve been at this whole author journey for the better part of nine months now. I’ve had my ups, I’ve had my downs, and I’ve had everything in-between. There are stories that I have written that fill me with pride. Others… well, lets just say they were better in my head than they were on paper. This blog is actually nearing a hundred posts, which in it’s own small way is an accomplishment too. It’s hard to keep at this, week after week. I know I’ve been very inconsistent about it lately, but I’m trying.
Which brings me to my point today: Everything, and I mean everything, in your life will conspire to make you quit writing. Chief among them will be yourself. You’ll look at others who have found their own stride and success, and despair that you will never be like them. You will write horrible dumpster fires of a rough draft, which will never see the light of day. You’ll have to torch many, many ideas down to the ground and start over. You will wail, you will gnash your teeth, and you will stare into the abyss and you will lose.
Honestly, pursuing a career writing isn’t a very good idea. You put yourself out for the whole world to judge your work, often times for little to no pay or notoriety. The ability of human beings granted anonymity and an audience to be absolutely atrocious is without equal. You work long hours, reap little benefit, and quite frankly editing a story you’ve written will make you wish desperately you’d never written the stupid thing in the first place. You’ve got a years long, far from guaranteed, uphill battle to get a book published. Now-a-days, you have to have an audience first, before most big publishers will even look at you. If you’re like me, you’re coming at writing with absolutely no experience or talent, only a burning desire to add your verse to the powerful play.
Quitting on your career in writing is probably a sign of good mental health. I cannot even begin to describe the level of self-doubt which gnaws at me daily because I decided to take up this torch. You want to find out just how much you can hate yourself? Spend ten minutes writing and deleting the same sentence, over and over, never getting it right. Until you throw your hands into the air and walk away from the keyboard, swearing this will be the last time. Only to return, grumpy at yourself and everyone else for your failures. Wanting nothing to do with that isn’t a bad thing: It’s a smart thing.
I choose to press on. I choose to sit here, at 5:40 AM, headphones on with music blaring, writing out my feelings on a day where I should be asleep. I chose to dedicate myself every day, in the face of constant input categorically demonstrating that I’ve nothing new or interesting to say. I choose to go on when I’ve told my friends, who are basically my family, that I’ve chosen this path, only to produce nothing of note or value as of yet (aside from blog posts, and an as yet unedited serial short story). It’s hard, when these men and women are so highly educated, so highly learned, and so incredibly well read. I feel like I’m a failure to them, that I’ve let them down by not living up to their standards, to their abilities. Like I said earlier, the doubts get dark and they mount up, fast.
That choice, one that I don’t feel is a stretch to say extends to every author ever to put pen to paper, is one that is made daily. Choosing to once more enter the breech, to don your diving mask and swim headfirst into the much that is the Internet, those are radical acts. You are shaking your fist at the heavens, screaming in rage and defiance at all the forces arrayed against you. You stand, axe in hand, hewing words and phrases from the encroaching darkness, hoping against hope that this time you shall stand victorious among the neat rows of your slain enemies. Even if you do win, tomorrow simply brings a new battle, a new set of fears and anxieties, and a new set of challenges which will require yet more introspection and self doubt. Those who want to enter that arena every day? They are Gladiators, in every sense of the word.
Fight on fellow Gladiators,
Justin
