and they don’t care
Dogs might find it endearing or take it as a challenge
like a human would
If it’s a woman they’d think you’re creepy
But birds don’t care
they let us watch them
observe them
Not everyone
is sinister
some of us just like
to watch
look at the curves
the smiles
the frowns
or a sideways glance
guys out here
this
afternoon.
Their faces buried
in their phone
I felt smug
because even though I was both lonely and sad
I was reading a book
and I was better than them
and there’s nothing more to it than that
Driving is its own kind of magic, the kind of magic that you don’t find easy anymore; it’s solitude, and the complete absence of everything. You have no choice but to be absent when you drive, and as long as you know where you’re going, and are familiar with the road (and the car) driving couldn’t be easier.
I like thinking. I don’t do that nearly as much anymore. I suppose that’s why I love traveling and I suppose I also like the feeling that I’m going somewhere – doing something. It’s tangible and it’s easy to quantify, just count the steps.
Driving gives you a respite from yourself and all the must-does. The nag in your head stays quiet for a while. Sometimes you ponder the past, other times the future (but not nearly as often). Sometimes you think up stories or just watching the trees and the car swear a bit to the left if the trees is on the left and on the right if the trees are on the right. You’d never hit a car though, although you think about. Nothing would be easier. Then you consider the consequences, the aftermath. Often you survive the crash and then stuff happens in your head and you’re gone. The magic happens.
The radio is on, for the most part, and strangers sing and laugh in your ear. Sometimes you sing along. I sound good as long as I don’t turn down the volume. The raspy sound of my voice, the tone deafness. I was just on kiddy wheels all along, borrowing their power.
I wonder what happen when we have self-driving cars… I swear humanity will go to hell then. The last sanctuary bulldozed by progress. When will we regress?
I wonder if it was the same way when people got cellphones. It used to be that one could escape on a bus or traveling on a train. Of course, they always had the option to read or play on the gameboy. I don’t think it was the same.
Writing and driving is kinda similar, in a way. They are both magic; you get lost in what you do. Though, it’s more peaceful driving, I think. An activity that is destroying the earth. Though, death is nature too, I suppose.
Life feels like fate
sometimes.
I don’t think there is fate
A lot of it is luck
but there are other things that
we are in control
over.
We know the answers
Listen to the heart
is the common saying
although I don’t think anyone really
know what that means
anymore.
Some are keen listeners
others don’t
How else can I explain
the voices in my head?
It started out as a bet, do I dare make a blog about myself?
It was a surprisingly hard decision to make, there are a lot of shady people on the internet, after all.
But I came through and now I love it, sort of.
I think it’s important that you get stuff out there, not because you might get discovered; just a ‘like’ means a lot.
It means that you are not alone.
That’s why I keep doing it, for the recognition
It’s weird, when it was time to decide what to do with my life, I chose to be a writer. I never gave it much thought until at the end of University, when I was running out of time. The choice always seemed so far off.
I never wrote anything seriously before then and I’ve only been writing for about five years since. I took jobs where I could work as little as possible and write instead. I feel like I’m at a place now where I can actually finish something good and I’m about to. I’m already browsing agents but I still have some extensive editing to do.
For some reason writing is the only viable thing I could see myself do.
I’m a lonely guy. My sister had a kid a year ago and I’m more convinced than ever that I never want one. I ended a relationship recently too, realizing it’s too much work. I’m too self centered and I like spending time with myself. Funny thing is I like talking to new people but I don’t want to make friends and create obligations, people seemed to like me too, at first, at least… I must sound terribly immature.
I think there’s a bit missing in my head.
I love writing stupid bullshit, because that’s what writing is. We put words on a page and we have no idea if it’s any good or not. It sound right in our head until next time. Sometimes we know it’s bullshit but we put up with it anyway, telling ourselves I’ll fix it later.
Bullshit is good, it’s the only way to write. Otherwise you take yourself too seriously and that’s the death of the story.
An altogether serious novel has no place in literature, it must contain some silliness, otherwise it’s a product. It’s just pandering to the reader and putting yourself up on a pedestal that you’re deep.
Writing is one of the few mediums where the artist have full control, make use of that and write your bullshit.
It’s all bullshit anyway.
How strange it is that a comfortable life can be a problem.
I don’t know about you but I remember when I just moved into my first apartment and took odd jobs as a substitute teacher I had the most fun being a writer. My life was uncertain, I didn’t know what to make of myself and somehow that translated well into my writing.
Nowadays my life is secure and the job I have, although not the worst for a creative person, I’ve become weary of it. I want to do and see new things… I don’t think any creative person is satisfied with their condition. It’s a trap, if you let it and it becomes harder and harder to break up the monotony if you wait.
At the same time, having a secure job gives you peace to write, but I don’t know about you, I wouldn’t mind living in poverty if it meant I could write and live.
Sometimes things need to change and I fear I’ll live like I do now for the rest of my life if I don’t do something about it.
”A story is based on the merit on how much is removed.” I never understood this quote until I had to do it.
I recently had to remove a lot from a chapter because it was boring and irrelevant, though there were bits and pieces that I adored, and tried very hard to incorporate, it never fit in anywhere, as if it lost its place.
I don’t know if there’s any meaning to losing text like this or if it’s just a necessary step in my process to get to the good part.
Of course, some things are removed on purpose; backstories, for instance, rarely fit into the narrative but is essential nonetheless. The reader doesn’t need to know the backstory (not always) but the writer absolutely have to.
The more you decide not to include in the final product the more depth a story has and the more implicit things become which the writer can build upon.
At least, that is what I like to believe, that the many hours I spent on a segment is important even though it’s not included and somehow enriches the story instead if being relegated to the void where it came from.
When you write a story you often come to a point where everything feels wrong. It physically hurts working on the it and you don’t know why. That is your cue to stop. You’ll try to fix it, of course, because you are stubborn, but why move the boulder that’s in the way when you can walk around it?
Discard what you have written, at least parts of it, perhaps only a sentence or two that you feel stuck on, and start over and you’ll find the flow again. It’s not worth working against the grain.
We don’t know what we are doing anyway and we need to accept that.
I like to think of us as scribes recording stories from a long lost archive that’s in a language we can barely understand. We catch the general idea but we must fill in the blanks ourselves.
Kill your darlings is the advice, I believe.
The Horrors of Writing 