I’ll admit it: I’ve been binging The Walking Dead again.
If I want to pretend to be an intellectual, I’d say it was research into human nature in the face of an apocalypse. I have not recently seen evidence in real life that suggests that people will act differently than their fictional counterparts if they were faced with a zombie (or any kind of, really) apocalypse. Zombies in TWD might be the overt threat, but the real monsters are other people. The Witcher games and books, fantasy tales about a “monster hunter” mutant named Geralt of Rivia play the same tune. Horrifying creatures are a real threat, but the true monsters are us.
I visit plenty of places on the internet lately for or by writers and I recently encountered this strange theme on one site where all of the writers seemed to all be posting in the theme of “you’re a great writer, keep writing” affirmations for each other. Some were even pretty self-congratulatory (“yes, I like my own posts and I am not ashamed to”). Still others were of the “everyone here is the best writer”.
Now… I’m not against encouragement. I’ve even partaken in it myself. But when it becomes a common, daily and reoccurring theme… I have the strong urge to pinch my nose and walk away from that kind of community. Even if it is well-intended community-building, it still smells like bullshit.
Write, don’t talk about how great everyone else’s writing is (and god-forbid, don’t tell me how great you think your own writing is).
What do you think?
Am I just being a humbug? Or does it feel like a weird kind of phony? Do these folks really mean it? Or are they just saying it, hoping that others will pay it forward until it boomerangs back?
Well, that would be two recent projects that just don’t have what I think is needed for prime time.
First, the song I was working on as an experiment where folks write the lyrics in a certain genre to a song of mine they never heard… I tried to make something of that last week and the initial takes just felt awkward. It’s not for the lack of Chris and Sandy’s lyrical talents; rather, I just couldn’t find a way to make either of them work well. Close, but no banana, as they say. It ended up feeling as if I should be doing less, rather than more, on the lyrics front. And my mind is blank for what would work, if you can believe that crap.
As an experiment, it was fun, but I don’t think anyone would thank me for putting the result out with their name associated. So, I’ll let it rest a bit and see if I either get a better sense of rhythm and flow to the lyrics, or if I come up with some of my own.
I sometimes ask myself not if I should write, but if I should share what I write.
Writing is my lifeblood. I have occasionally “given up the bad habit of writing” only to find myself slinking back with a scrawled bit of doggerel like a junky needing his morning fix. If I go more than about a day without writing something, somewhere — I get that janky tremor that we used to call “jonesing” back in the day.
I cannot stop. That much has been decided. And, for the most part, I like to think of it as a victimless habit. Mostly harmless… Besides, like decent person with any filthy habit, I wash my hands afterwards.
But should I share what I write? That gets trickier.
I still believe it is “mostly harmless”. But I know, regardless of the perception of “quality” (in quotes for my buddy, Ted), what I write often seems to not be (for whatever reason, perhaps due to “quality”) the kind of stuff that people particularly “get” or maybe even like. And I am not entirely blind to the qualities of the writings that are well-received, but the well-received style of writing is plainly not me.
So I often find myself asking, when I write, should I share it? Or should I hermit myself off in the woods and eventually be found as a dead and desiccated body, with stacks of scrawled within notebooks scattered around my cave that some cold hiker will burn for fuel against the cold autumn air?
Wait… don’t answer those… those were rhetorical questions. Allow me at least the illusion that someone reads and maybe slightly likes what I write, please.
Channeling non-oblique, non-obtuse writer to see if I can make something of something…
