Authors Notes:
First and foremost a shout-out for the lovely Lana Del Rey who really helped inspire this piece. You can go ahead and blame the song and video for “Ride” that was so incredibly beautiful to me that I couldn’t help but subtly reference it in my story. On a rainy day as today, I was happy I got to listen to it for the first time because it was the perfect fit to how I’ve been feeling lately.
Recently I’ve been kind of making it as a writer. As you read this, this work is actually the work of a published writer! Woo, go me! Only now with some of my work suddenly becoming published do I see the curtain start to fall off the dreams I’ve made for myself.
I’m a lover of all things art, and I have dreams that one day I’ll be an artist more then I’ll be a writer. But it’s hard to write things as art, because art in virtue should be challenging, and because it seems more and more that this generation itself enjoys less and less to be challenged when we read. Even I suffer from this predicament. I’ll bitch about the terribleness of most of the best sellers lately but when trying to honestly tackle some more “art” works in literature I’ll find myself struggling. If you prescribed to any modern theories, then you’ll likely say that this problem arises from our brains becoming rewired for purposes beyond contemplative reading. I don’t know if I believe it, or if I just don’t want to believe it, but it’s challenging when your ambitions becomes first handed suffered by editor’s who seemingly only want cookie cutter works.
In trying to figure this all out, I’ve devised that there is two kinds of writing: writing for the self and writing for an audience. When writing for the self you are writing works that you create to challenge yourself and to explore the extent of your abilities. When writing for an audience, you are fulfilling a demand and vision the common market desires from you. You get this all the time in other art as well. I know it’s cliché to say, “I’ve done this mostly for myself,” but it becomes something you understand once you realize the division between the two reasons for writing.
So why not write the stuff that pays your bills AND write the stuff that’s going to contact the sole few whose brain that are still wired to think?
Because there are further depths to consider. You have to be able to write for yourself AND write for your audience because you don’t want to be another sell-out writer. With one of my stories I thought I could say, “aw fuck it—it’s another accolade on the resume,” but seeing that piece now I feel like, much to my dismay that the piece which now represents me as a writer no longer feels like one of my works after it went through the editing process (A Simpsons episode staring literacy heartthrob Neil Gaimen talks a little bit about this effect). An editor can tell me, “I want to support you as a writer,” and yet I’m tempted to say, “Are you really?” when my work gets re-modified into some kind of abomination.
Maybe I should just get a pseudonym?
I’m trying my best to be realistic here—Our world is not a world of heart, and I’m not going to be able to sustain myself with idealism and dreams. It’s like what my mother says, “At the end of the day it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you can get your meat and potatoes.”
But I’m just not the kind of guy who can turn out junk for pay. I get bored if the work feels too simple and easy. This is both a blessing and a curse I suppose. Maybe one day I’ll see it as the difference between being a bottom feeder and actually feeling like somehow history might remember me.
I know I can walk the path of the artist, and I know what that path looks like. All I need is a driving force to carry me down it and right now that driving force is a love to write. But I’m worried about how far that love can take me. One second being published is the greatest event of my life, and another time it becomes a desperate realization.
Maybe I’m just panhandling for inspiration/advice right now. Maybe I’m just venting because I want to believe that I can be an optimist and a realist—even if realism often has me feeling so pessimistic. Maybe, I’m trying to prove to myself that deep down inside I’m scared as all hell to the starving failure I might become. Maybe, I’m seeing the gap between now and the “other side”-- but really...nothing gained if nothing ventured. I suppose if I were die a fool blinded then at least I’d have proven myself as something.
I know in my heart that I can be a writer (NOTE: NOT A PROOFREADER--lol)—I just don’t know if the rest of the world believes it yet.