Greetings from the edge,
Well, here we go, I guess.
I’m reading On Writing, and the ineffable Stephen King is very clear: if you want to be a writer, you need to do two things. Read a lot and write a lot.
He recommends applying arse to chair, hands to keyboard, and not stopping until you hit 1,000 words a day, while also reading for about four hours. Essentially, dear reader, if I want writing to become my full-time job, I need to start putting full-time hours into it.
King believes there is no shortcut, secret handshake, or haunted typewriter that can replace those two habits. Reading teaches you about style, pacing, character, and what works. Sometimes bad books teach you even more than good ones because they show you exactly what not to do.
And that 1,000-word target?
That’s the training wheels, motherfucker.
Eventually, he says, you need to work up to 2,000 words a day. No pressure. That is only about four times my output on a good day.
Silently screams into the void.
He also recommends having a dedicated space to write. Thankfully, I have the broom cupboard, and it has a door. Now all I need to do is replace most of my blood with caffeine-infused vape juice and find a decent block of uninterrupted time.
Writing, King says, is about creating your own world, and you cannot do that while half-watching daytime quiz shows or, in my case, endlessly bouncing around YouTube.
Lately, I’ve found myself doomscrolling far too much. The political situation in the US has become my poison of choice, and I need to stop. My knowledge of what Donald Trump and his coven of ghouls are doing will not change it one bit.
So, you know what?
Fuck it.
I’m not going to waste what few brain cells I have left doomscrolling my way through every new outrage. I’d rather spend that energy writing, reading, or building something.
Lastly, King warns against relying too heavily on the muse. They are fickle, inconsistent creatures. They cannot be turned on and off like a laptop. We are the poor bastards who have to do the work.
Because writing is work.
Like working in a call centre. Like being a chef. Like fixing computers. Like anything else.
I’m also toying with the idea of writing a belated prison-yard beatdown of 12 Rules for Life. It is, quite simply, the blandest, most milquetoast self-help book I have ever read, and I strongly suspect it is actively harmful.
I read it six or seven years ago, when I was in a pretty bad place, and I could easily have ended up heading down a very different path if I had listened too closely to that Kermit-voiced hack.
Still, that is a whole different post for a whole different day.
See you in the margins,
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