"I think the key to writing is, uh... sitting your ass down and starting to tippity-tap on the goddamn board." -Bob Odenkirk, 2022
Love this post. I don't call myself a writer because it feels presumptuous, considering my average rate of output. But my life is happier if I sit down at least a few times a week and write. It's just a good place for my mind to be.
I think writing, as something one does, informs one's identity - I think there's no way it can't, if you're putting time into it. The things we do with our time, to some degree, make us who we are. But there's a danger in putting the identity-cart before the spending-your-time horse. Better to write and observe the kind of person you become as a result than to announce your intent to become a certain kind of person and try to write your way into it.
As someone who also writes, I loved this essay! (And I’m commenting several days after you published not because I was ignoring you but because I was out of town.) Thanks for putting so well my own thoughts about the ambivalent feelings we writers have about our avocation/job/hobby/compulsion.
Your argument about class in writing is so smart and convincing, and the John Scalzi example supports your point better than you might know. I went to college with John, and he grew up very, very poor. He has always been prolific and completely not tortured about his writing. He wrote a column for our college paper that was always funny and smart, and he became the paper’s editor his senior year. I have always admired his no-nonsense approach to enjoyment in writing: his books are well-plotted and funny, but they also have a point--a point that likely reaches orders of magnitude more readers than that of literary writing.
Anyway, I enjoyed this piece--and bonus points for using the word “grooming” in its original, apolitical sense!
"I think the key to writing is, uh... sitting your ass down and starting to tippity-tap on the goddamn board." -Bob Odenkirk, 2022
Love this post. I don't call myself a writer because it feels presumptuous, considering my average rate of output. But my life is happier if I sit down at least a few times a week and write. It's just a good place for my mind to be.
I think writing, as something one does, informs one's identity - I think there's no way it can't, if you're putting time into it. The things we do with our time, to some degree, make us who we are. But there's a danger in putting the identity-cart before the spending-your-time horse. Better to write and observe the kind of person you become as a result than to announce your intent to become a certain kind of person and try to write your way into it.
As someone who also writes, I loved this essay! (And I’m commenting several days after you published not because I was ignoring you but because I was out of town.) Thanks for putting so well my own thoughts about the ambivalent feelings we writers have about our avocation/job/hobby/compulsion.
Your argument about class in writing is so smart and convincing, and the John Scalzi example supports your point better than you might know. I went to college with John, and he grew up very, very poor. He has always been prolific and completely not tortured about his writing. He wrote a column for our college paper that was always funny and smart, and he became the paper’s editor his senior year. I have always admired his no-nonsense approach to enjoyment in writing: his books are well-plotted and funny, but they also have a point--a point that likely reaches orders of magnitude more readers than that of literary writing.
Anyway, I enjoyed this piece--and bonus points for using the word “grooming” in its original, apolitical sense!
I love this. Probably because I feel/echo a lot of it, and sometimes I just can't have it with the "we hate to write lolz" crowd.