The Writers Lament
Everyday that I sit down to write I am reminded that everyday we are dying.
And perhaps it is not the writing that is creating that feeling, but it certainly feels like it. As I write this current piece, my daily thousand words (a fiction in and of itself) I am in tears. A deep gasping sob is emitted from my body most every time that I have to sit down and do this work.
In particular, these sobs come during activities that feel like work yet come with little to no reward. As I sit in my apartment writing this essay, I can’t help but wonder “Why?” What is the purpose of labor without a guarantee of financial gain or external recognition? What achievement is there in dedicating this time, during which I could be doing any number of other unproductive activities? Why am I once again giving time to something that only gives me more grief?
And this is ironic to me.
As someone who has always believed in education for education’s sake, art for art’s sake, and the pleasure of creation and aestheticism, this should be enough. This writing should be enough. My intellectual musings should be enough. I should feel that I am enough as a writer, with or without profit and with or without pain.
However, it is not enough.
Despite my many aspirations, I am not always paid in daily word counts. I am not always praised in completed essays. As time moves on I can hear the ticking time clock telling me that the sand is running out, and that no matter how much I write and create, what do I have to show for it?
Documents.
Many and multiple pages strewn across applications and archives, both physical and digital storage filled to the brim with these thoughts. Ideas that have yet to see the light of day. And perhaps that is the problem. I write, but I don’t pursue publication, I produce but as of yet it has no purpose. No telos.
But there again is the writers lie, because I do publish with purpose.
I constantly produce articles and chapters into which I have put time and effort, but who is the audience? And perhaps that is the truth, the true fear underlying it all. The fear that no matter what is produced, who’s to say that it will be received or that it will be recognized?
Writing has no guarantee of success.
Neither does publication, neither does dedication, neither does longing. There are many who spend early mornings and late nights striving toward some semblance of recognition and reward and they die with nothing. With none having read or appreciated their work.
So, haven’t I done enough?
Despite reaching few, those who I have reached enjoy my work, thank me for my contributions, and cite it accordingly. What more could a writer ask for?
The titles.
That’s what’s more.
The constant chase towards making something out of your talents, writing something into existence. But, once again, is that not just capitalism? Is it not just validation in the material world that only means something because we were programmed to believe that it does?
More tears again.
Why do I keep doing this to myself? Following after figments that lead down paths that I was not meant to travel. Is this not just another of many hungry ghosts begging to be chased around the haunted halls of a tortured souls journey? These ghosts of recognition and reward. And for what? To end up like Scott or some other writer, unable to sustain a lifetime of creativity. Burdened by the ever impending work/life balance.
Is that what you want?
And perhaps that is also just capitalism. The belief that there is one path, one set and linear method to be in a state of productivity.
The fear then is to not be productive. The fear then is that all of my thoughts and ideas will stay just that. Never grounded in reality, no matter how much I fight and battle to make it so. No matter how much I strive to remain in the land of the living.
Because everyday I question materiality.
I wonder if the writing is actually materializing? Perhaps I am just imagining it all. A mind wandering, displaced into a body that believes it’s meant to be here, meant to do this thing, producing this work at this time, when in fact it is not here at all.
As the hopes get grander and grander and the dreams gets madder and madder, it doesn’t seem to be worth it. And perhaps that is actually why I write. To work through these muddled thoughts and the myriad ways that I could be better off somewhere else, doing something else.
The ideation of places much better than here.
The imagination of projects much more interesting than this.
The creation of worlds and futures that don’t feel like this one, because I don’t have to be a part of it.
I can finally just be.
Finally moving from the process of writing to the experience of being on the page. Forever immortalized in the minds and hearts of all that will make purchase of these penned down pains.
