The Whale Belly

Today I woke up a little late. I had a headache, and I felt dazed. Usually I like to go to the computer first thing and put in about thirty minutes of meditative writing, but the boy would wake up soon and I would have to be around to make sure he got ready for school. After I got back from taking him to school it took me another hour or so to finally sit down to work.

I opened the story I was working on yesterday. The voice in my head said “fuuuuuuck” as if I were about to fill out an employment application demanding I mark the date of every menial job I’ve ever had and list all my past supervisors’ phone numbers, physical addresses, and names of children. I just couldn’t pick up where I left my poor protagonist, so I killed him immediately and started following around this strange pastor, who began to remember seeing a woman walk into a pond and never reemerge. And it was fun for a while, but I’m almost positive that tomorrow I’ll kill him off as well. I’m the serial killer of a fiction writing, stalking his prey and making short work of them before they have a chance to see their stories unfold. I guess that’s where I’m at in my artistic development.

I try not to be overly worried about this. I read regularly, I write daily, and I take note of my weaknesses. What else can I do? It seems like hating myself for not having talent won’t help me get any better, and I doubt I’m going to stop writing any time soon considering how much self-loathing I’ve already lugged around so far without quitting. I might as well accept my limitations and keep on chugging along.

What keeps me coming back is the process anyway. I enjoy when I’m in the act of creating a scene or a character, even if afterwards I don’t have much to show for it. It’s that problem of being able to see something in your head but just not having the skill to adequately translate it into a communicable medium. It’s similar to why no one is ever interested in hearing you describe a particularly moving dream you had. I don’t think anyone ever has been able to perfectly get across their dream, but certainly a handful have gotten much closer than everyone else. I think that’s why writers like Tolstoy can seem so great even when he’s describing something pretty mundane. His writing transports readers, so they see what he dreams.

Despite my stated resolution to be comfortable within my current limitations, I spent most of the afternoon wondering if I should be doing things differently, whether I should be more disciplined in learning the craft, going back to square one. I read that Joyce Carol Oates loved diagramming sentences in school when everyone else hated it, and I thought I should diagram sentences. Then I went online and spent about five minutes looking up “how to diagram sentences” and then spent a solid hour watching NBA highlights on Youtube. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I can’t do tedious things. Sentence diagrams, employment applications, taxes, reviving dead stories, none of it. I’d rather embody the infinite monkey theorem than do something as agonizing as… what do you call it? Work.

I think, for me, the decision about whether or not one should be intentional about his own development comes down to knowing where he’s at and where he’s trying to get to next. An intention has to be internally persuasive for someone to actually pull it off; it can’t just be something that one thinks one ought to do based on his vague understanding of some abstract world or what some uncaring authority tells him to do.

And now I’m wondering why any of this matters. I mean, isn’t the very obsession with constant improvement a bit silly? How many lovely stories and grand adventures could have had by now if I just stopped worrying so much about whether or not I’m good enough in the eyes of a few overeducated critics that exist entirely in my head? Write good stories because it’s fun. Write good sentences because it’s fun. Read good books because they’re fun.

The answer to most of my problems is to get my head out of my ass.