alone

Remember Alone?

Writers:

Remember what it is to be alone?

Fifteen interviews after XXXX gets his book published by XXXXX XXXX Press. Constant promo. Constant talk. Talk about the work. ‘What brought this book out?’  ‘What were you thinking here?’

Use of words: Great, Beautiful, Amazing, Stunning, Remarkable.

After an hour of thought, I’d say that I’ve read two books that I would consider great in my proportion. Two books. I know it’s nice to be nice. That’s okay. But, please, as an excuse, do not use the ‘it’s tough to be a writer.’ No. It may feel tough, but it is not. Look around you.

To sum: I think that within the internet, writers can easily grab hold of a lot of pages and capitalize and gather attention.

Remind yourself: This is a psychic burden, this page. Is it worth it? Is it worth it for me and for the audience?

It is okay to be alone.

Have you ever said no to an interview? You can! You can, actually. It can be worth the gamble of pissing off the proposer. You don’t even need to tell them that it is because of you, because of your want to sit quietly and think, and work. Talk can be poison.

It’s a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to write or speak very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.  –Henry Moore

It’s easy to feel the frenetic prompts that the internet–and within it the communities–create. Resist them. Action for action is not action at all. It is movement. (Marketing is often the endgame for this movement; you create burden. Burden. Think about what you want to play, what you want to ask. What you want to give. Think long term. Ten moves in chess deep long term. Anything less than that is lazy.)

Resist the movement. Revolution, now, is a withdrawal.

Remeber what it is to write. Remember the seed?

The seed is you. Alone.

This is, as it must be, as much for me as it is for XXXX. For you. For me. One in the same here.

Random / 42 Comments
October 29th, 2009 / 3:19 pm