Just fucking grind it out, and whatever happens, happens
I don’t know what I’m writing right now, but I need to write something, because every minute that I’m not writing is a minute that I’m not getting to the place that I need to be
What would have happened to me if I’d gotten my first short story published, and I’d had a whole bunch of other students my age telling me how much they liked my writing? What would I have done then?
I don’t know if it really matters because I could have written anyways for myself, and I did write for myself, and all of those stories went absolutely nowhere
My son is sleeping in our one bedroom apartment because I can’t get my shit together and put this fucking talent to use the way it needs to be, because I can’t just put my ass down in the seat and grind out those one thousand words, every day
That’s what it takes, and I don’t have what it takes. A bunch of talk, a bunch of plans, and no execution
Why am I looking for inspiration? Inspiration from what? To do what? What is the story? What is the character? What am I trying to say? What do I have to say that no one else can? What is worth me opening my mouth for?
How do I get to that place? Where the writing is indispensable, where it hurts me to not sit in front of a computer and blast out the things that are rattling around inside my mind?
Where is my work ethic? Not the momentary flash of inspiration, not the thing I have to say or else my chest will burst, but the everyday workmanship that comes with writing a story?
I write essays because it’s easy. Yeah, I have things to say, but an essay is a really easy thing to write. I can turn my brain off and rant in an essay. Stories take craft, and I don’t have craft
But I want to tell a story. I want to make something that takes the reader to a new place.
I want to see something visual with my work. I love the way that sound, visuals and writing come together in television, and there’s no storytelling medium as rich as that
I’ve watched the same scene from Attack on Titan over and over again because of the music. I watch the scene, for the music. I watch the scene for the animation, for the way Eren looks at Mikasa, for the way the visuals climax with the sound, for the feeling it gives me when I see these two characters who love each other express that love in the face of their certain deaths
That is only possible in television. That’s what I want to write. That’s what I want to do. I want some kid to look at my scene over and over again and have the same emotional experience the last time as they had the first
I have no idea how to accomplish this goal though. I need to learn how to grind, I need to learn how to grind the right way
Do I need to learn how to draw? How to edit video? How to shoot video in the first place? How to act?
I want the essetialism of my story to cut through the bullshit of crappy characters and plots and the laziness of falling back on the thing you know
I want to write something that I don’t know. I want to pour my heart onto a page and be scared by what I see, because the thing that I’m looking at is myself
I want to sell a story for a million dollars and be able to give something to everyone who’s ever helped me and give something to people who would ask for it
I want to be able to write past contrived nonsense and produce something as unabashedly truthful as Chewing Gum, something that is the antithesis of the crap that gets paraded as good television
I want this story to tear at me because it feels so true, to leave me exposed and hurt after I stand up from my desk because I peeled away the layers I’ve built up and revealed myself not to the world, but to myself
I want to give other people the feeling I had when Wallace died, when Gohan went beyond Super Saiyan, when that white girl said that her baby had twenty fathers, when All Might told Midoriya that he could be a hero too, when Jake watched his father die, when Celes threw herself from the top of the mountain, when Minato died, when Kurtz whispered “The horror!,” when Light Yagami sent that woman cop to her death, when Mekhi Phifer shot all those cops, when those girls ostracized their friend for not having a pony.
I want, but I don’t try. I desire, but I don’t work. I need to grind, but I don’t grind. Every minute, every hour, every day. I need to work harder, but I don’t
I want to roll a blunt and walk down the street smoking it and say fuck you to everyone who says anything because I don’t need their approval anyway
I want to be an artist, but being an artist is not about talent, it’s about perseverance and work, work, work all of the time
The race goes not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but to the motherfucker who worked the hardest the longest and got the breaks. I can’t control the breaks, but I can control whether I’m the motherfucker who worked the hardest for it
So I just sat here and said I wasn’t getting up until I wrote 1,000 words. Here I am at 980 words. Tomorrow I will write 1,000 more, and actually think about them this time. I really have to do better
