This Writing Life
The Purgatory of the Practice
Art is to console those who are broken by life. —Vincent van Gogh
Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar. —E.B. White
Above: An aspirational nook in my future abode.
This writing life is tricky.
It is to spot a gap in the world, to dab at it with words, to try to fill it in.
It is long days in the best and worst of ways
It is not a pleasure, but a privilege.
It is to never know and to always look.
It is to imprison dynamic sensations within static words.
It is to embrace unvarnished truth and reject embellished lie.
It is to face infinity and not flinch, to stare at the void without blinking.
It is to know the means are the end, the work is the destination.
It is to wrestle with thoughts, to iron out inconsistencies.
It is lonely work that assures the writer he is not alone.
It is to fan embers of inspiration with time, focus, attention.
It is to know the only way out is through.
It is to channel Hemingway, to sit down and bleed.
It is to see cursor as speed bag, to know that matter how hard or fast you hit it, it keeps coming back for more.
It is to tire of writing but to write until tired.
It is to know that love for words and ideas is often unrequited.
It is to improvise after far-too-much thought.
It to string words slowly, one after another like beads on a rosary.
It is to peck and scrawl and scribble and edit and omit and slam and seethe.
It is to know that each bit is worse than it could be and better than it seems.
It is to murder darlings and rascals alike.
It is to banish lovely adverbs, to slaughter beautiful adjectives, to crush clever clauses, to backstab beloved characters, to strikethrough this and that and the other thing.
It is to wield a keen scythe, to slash and chop and hack until ideas are just so.
It is to get up close and personal with uncertainty, to allow mysterious stranger to become acquaintance and—sometimes—dear friend.
It is to stare at the page’s white mirror and see a surface on which the soul may seep.
It is to collect experiences and spill thoughts.
It is catharsis, to drag emotion and feeling without from that safely-guarded prison within.
It is to know that the pain of regret hurts much more than the pain of embarrassment.
It is to make a Faustian contract in reverse.
It is to hate writing but to love having written.
It is to swallow a steady helping of I can’t go on. I’ll go on.
And yet—
This writing life is good.
Its words make up worlds.
For that I wouldn’t trade a thing.
Per my about page, White Noise is a work of experimentation. I view it as a sort of thinking aloud, a stress testing of my nascent ideas. Through it, I hope to sharpen my opinions against the whetstone of other people’s feedback, commentary, and input.
If you want to discuss any of the ideas or musings mentioned above or have any books, papers, or links that you think would be interesting to share on a future edition of White Noise, please reach out to me by replying to this email or following me on Twitter.
With sincere gratitude,
Tom
I love this - I may just print this out and put it on my wall :)