The Problem with Inspiration

If you know me well then you know I’m all about impulse and inspiration borne from outside catalysts. For example, I hear that it takes 10,000 hours of doing the same craft over and over again to reach mastery. All of a sudden I’m racing home to my computer and punching the keys like a boxer would a bag of dope, and I’m being productive as hell and everything is great and there's that fantastic feeling of unstoppability you only get once every couple years. The problem for me is that all this endures for a few hours only, a day max before the inspirational high depletes and I’m stuck again with the stark reality that the "down" begets, which is that I’m lazy and I don't want to do this anymore. So I pause the thing and either require a new fix to resume it, or I quit completely if the requisite inspiration can't imbue my famished veins.

For discussion's sake, let's say I’m able to acquire the former. That means maybe I stumble upon a moving YouTube video. For example, the "How Bad Do You Want Success" audio paired with various clips of professional athletes in training. Wow, that gets me going. I watch that after waking up in the morning and suddenly I’m this wrecking ball tasked to obliterate every blank page I see. But my eyes are bad and after an hour or so I lose sight of why I was inspired in the first place. Off to the YouTube search bar for my next fix.

But of course I’m busy after the morning passes so whatever it was that impulse propelled me to create gets the broom treatment, and two years fold over before one day I’m opening random files in my Dropbox as a way of procrastinating on my latest project, and that's when I chance upon seeing the from-yore, bastardized document that looks a little too much like Brenda's baby.

By then, I could give a shit less. I’m not gonna revisit this document. Why would I? The original inspiration's already made the obit page. My beliefs have altered so drastically since I first wrote the thing, I don't even believe in the subject matter's stance anymore. I’m juggling 15 other blog ideas and 20 satire pieces, a fiction short and two novels, along with life outside of writing, pondering meaning and purpose while getting upset by things like people using the wrong window wiper speed. With all that, I’m gonna pay mind to a shitty little 100-word document I created two years ago that I forgot about until just now? Fuhgeddaboudit.

And so the vicious cycle is born. I see or hear or discover a thing. I’m inspired. There's an impulse. I create something. I work at it.

Then the inspiration escapes.

The motivation to keep on goes limp.

I stop.

And then I see or hear or discover a new thing.

It's a sick disease, not being able to see a creation through to the finish line. I’m actually fearful right now, wondering if this post will be fated to the same dead end as all my other stillborn projects before it. Because this wasn't premeditated. This post, focusing on impulse and fleeting inspiration, is a product of that very same impulse and fleeting inspiration. At present I’m still inspired; I don't want to let any of the magic go, so I’m still up writing and keeping on, scared shitless that if I put it down for the night, come tomorrow, in some Kafkaesque way, this fucking pen will turn into an anvil harder to pick up than Candace Swanepoel at a billionaires' ball.

But goddamn, I'd like to do it. Get to bed at a reasonable hour, then pick up right where I left off. Right now it's Wednesday December 11, 2:30 a.m. The snow has abated, the ice is freezing over and Wayne, New Jersey is sleeping peacefully. I’m on my Ariel tip, wanting nothing more than to be a part of that world. Close my computer, lay in bed and read Tropic of Capricorn till I doze off for the next eight hours.

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I ended up doing it. I put the pen down, read Tropic of Capricorn, and then slept… for 50 hours. Not all at once, of course. As I write this now it is Tuesday December 17, which means six days have passed since I touched this document, since inspiration dictated the page margins and I got honest with myself in forefronting a major character hump I can’t get over, that I’m self-debilitating in my ability to finish what I start.

And now it’s Monday, December 23.

Yet another six days have gone by since writing the last paragraph and at this point I’ve got negative gajillion inspiration to persevere with this post. It took all the mental fortitude I could muster just to open the document up and read what I’d so far written. A 100 new ideas are brewing, simmering inside my brain. Even if discipline precludes me from entering the proverbial kitchen so long as I’ve got food on my plate (this post), still I can’t help but get a whiff or 20 of the myriad smells gravitating my way.

That’s not to say they even smell good. They could smell horrible for all I know. These new ideas could all be suffering from that pungent odor you only get by crouching down toward the sidewalk and picking up dog shit. But still I’d be allured for the very simple reason that whatever this new idea, what’s important is that it’s not the one I’m working on now, the one time has gotten me to loathe and despise. Wine with time is still wine; but after just a few days these written words become something sinister: textual mirrors reflecting back a very perverse man who gets his kicks from surfeiting in the fatty, gluttonous swine of laziness and procrastination. 

Truth be told, a real man finishes what he starts.

I don’t finish what I start.

I am not a real man.

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I don’t want to be inspired anymore. I’ve already been down that rabbit hole a million times. I know what’s down there.

No, I just want to be a hard worker. Someone that persists and perseveres and finishes what he starts, shitty little excuses be damned. Starting with this post. And then with every other future post, story, novel, email, Christmas and grocery list I write.

But first I have to clean up the mess I’ve amassed up until now. I have a folder in my Dropbox named “Current Projects” and another called “Limbo.” The former is self-explanatory; the latter is for projects I started but deemed too dumb, too corny, too unsalvageable to round off. What I’m vowing now is to go back and finish every single one of these projects, no matter how long it takes me. I will not start a new project during this time.

My goal is to build and fortify a threshold that will allow me persist in writing while enduring long bouts of being uninspired.

Ultimately this will foment a total personality change, one that begins with hard work and ends with an unyielding confidence to complete any task I start, by whim or by long-thought-out premeditation.

A real man finishes what he starts.

I’m 24 years old right now. It’s time I become a real man.

The last first post, for real-for real this time

A preface is necessary to begin, I think. These very words you are reading have all been birthed from the pen, NOT the keyboard, the latter being what I use ten times out of ten when writing anything of self-proclaimed importance. I'm only now trying the ancient method because of a fantastic essay I read, in which the writer pretty much denounces the so-called "progress" we think is made exclusively possible by the overwhelming, inexhaustible technological advancements of planet Earth.

"The text on a computer screen," says Mr. Wendell Berry, "and the computer printout too, has a sterile, untouched, factorymade look, like that of a plastic whistle or new car."

In other words, it lacks any semblance of a personality.

He goes on: "The [human] body does not do work like that. The body characterizes everything it touches. What it makes it traces over with the marks of its pulses and breathings, its excitements, hesitations, flaws, and mistakes. On its good work, it leaves the marks of skill, care, and love persisting through hesitations, flaws, and mistakes. And to those of us who love and honor the life of the body in this world, these marks are precious things, necessities of life."

Well I loved this passage so much (and his essay as a whole, whose link I'll post at the Preface's end), I decided to finally give this scribbling business a real try. For the readers' note, my writing alters a hundredfold--structurally, stylistically, you name it--when I alter the physical instrument, as if ownership falls upon two completely separate people. Historically I've pretty much renounced anything I've composed from ink; it's been shoddy and shitty work, to be perfectly frank.

I've much preferred the strokes of my keyboard, and admit to fancying the delete button like it were a lover who is much, much too easy. For you see, on a computer it takes all the will of the galaxy to write a thousand decent words, and absolutely nothing to make them all go away in a single swipe. As a keyboard artist I've been hiding behind my dear Delete, black and opaque that leaves no trace of its prints on any document. That single button is the perfectionist's best friend. Oh, did I mention that with words I'm as perfectionistic as Hitler's army was meticulous?

Which suffices to explain my terror in composing with the pen anything I deem important. Deletion becomes deleterious. Rewriting, which in my case means rewording every single sentence a million times till it reads like God Herself wrote it, is now an impossibility. I simply can't rewrite slight variants of "Which suffices to explain my terror in composing with the pen anything I deem important" a hundred times on paper; on computer I can leave the document a seemingly inexorable mess and like that! Delete! What remains for sight is only the most perfect version of that sentence. You see? I'm constricted by the permanence of ink. Not enough freedom with the college-ruled, and conversely, a sky too much with the computer, to the point that writing anything good enough seems totally beyond my mental capacity.

But, all this being said, here goes. Apologies in advance if you, the readers, find these words ugly, incorrigible, a cause to cringe violently wherever you are. Just know I'm far from my comfort zone here, and that in my very trying to write longhand I'm taking steps to bean the perfectionistic beast from my being once and for all.

(As promised, the link to Wendell Berry's fantastic article entitled "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine": http://www.crosscurrents.org/berryspring2003.htm.)

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How many blogs I've tried to get going to no avail over the years, I really can't say. It's sad really; each is born in the online world breathing anew, full of life and hope and boundless possibility. Then poop. Death by negligence, malnourishment, suffocation, strangulation, what have you. I'm both the father and the murderer of five, maybe ten stillborn blogs. Shouldn't there be some sort of trial for my inoperability? Of course I'm guilty! Arrest me! Lock me up! Punish me in some way, for my own sake as a writer! But alas, no slap on the wrist. Not so much as a temporary holding on my (ad voice) Blogger, powered by Google.com, account. I'm free as anyone else to birth yet another blog. And reckless, promiscuous as I am, that's exactly what I've just done. Antipriety version two, bastard blog to the world's worst blogger in human history.

But before I vow to become a new man, to faithfully nurture and feed APV2, I think what's first necessary is to confront all that has stood in the way of my keeping a successful blog all these years. In other words: my own shit. My own grand, stinking shit. And trust me, there's a lot of it. I'll do my best to compartmentalize the shit into manageable chunks. The reason for all this: I believe that in wholly admitting, then coming to terms with, my own shortcomings as a blogger/writer I'll be able to escape the vicious circle of quick death for good this time, and begin afresh. For real. For real-for real, I say.

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MY CHUNKS OF SHIT:

1) A surplus of laziness, and a deficiency in discipline.
So much of my life has been motivated by impulse. Unfortunately impulse operates almost entirely in spurts, and rarely endures the test of time. The result is an offensive amount of unfinished projects, from blogs to stories to half-rearranged rooms, etc. I tend to feel like a million bucks at a project's inception, then give up immediately once the elation has run its very short course. Laziness invades like a merciless tyrant. It seeks discipline, if only to destroy it so thoroughly, so irreparably that when I eventually find the poor thing lying broken, shattered in the dormant dormitory of my mind's shell, recognition is nigh impossible.

2) Anyone can blog.
As someone who's chosen the hammering of ideas into clear, expressive and luminous words as his calling, I find it bothersome that anyone with internet can publish hir* thoughts online and be called a writer. Don't these people understand how painful the process of REAL WRITING is? That it takes everything you've got, and demands more still? I've been resentful, though at the same time I know I should be anything but; blogging allows for self-expression in ultimate convenience, so that anyone can do it and be successful. As a writer, shouldn't this inspire me? The answer, of course, is that it hasn't. I've been inwardly bitter, reasoning that if anyone can blog, I want nothing to do with it. Say I to myself in the most pompously superior manner, "I'm a REAL WRITER." I told you these chunks of shit were big.

3) Fear of vulnerability.
Writing is something like being naked on stage for all an arena to scrutinize. If you are a good writer, then perhaps you don't mind the exposure. Perhaps you love it. (Actually one can look wonderful naked and still be embarrassed.) But if you're a bad writer, well then those may just be some of the most horribly mortifying moments of your life. In any event, whether you're good or bad, the truth is always the same: a writer is to be exposed, s/he's to be vulnerable, and s/he's to be judged by people who really have no business judging hir work.

To complete my analogy: the first time I saw a naked woman, it was my childhood friend's mom. I was seven. And oh boy, was she beautiful, and was it awesome! Though the entire thing was accidental, and though she covered herself up nanoseconds after, I can still recall the scene quite vividly. Whether my friend's mom knows it or not, she gave a little bit of herself up to me on that day. As with any naked man or woman I've seen in my lifetime, it isn't difficult to recall their nakedness, so long as my working memory permits the occasion. And so they've all given a little bit of themselves to me. And it works vice versa. I say it is very similar with writing, except instead of body, you are letting them see bits of your soul. But to recall such vulnerability one does not need memory, for the words are right there on the paper. All you have to do is desecrate them with the eye.

Doubtless these are scary prospects for any writer, artist, or creator. Which is why so much of my writing has stayed veiled from the external world.

4) A scarcity of topics.
My stillborn blogs all suffered from the same weakness: specialization. They were either designed to focus entirely on my struggles as a writer trying to make it, or on defacing propriety and policy, or on thinking outside the box, etc. They all had a single focus in mind. But as time went on I found myself strapped for content, trying to dig through the shallow ditch that would sink no deeper.

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So there's the shit. I've admitted, acknowledged, and taken responsibility for all of it. And that's that. Now I'm free to create and fulfill on a new promise: 

No longer will I let laziness govern my life. I will write--to start out--a blog every two weeks. That is the measuring stick for my discipline. I will stop resenting the fact that anyone can blog, and that it takes little to no talent to be successful. For blogging encourages millions of people to self-express by writing, and that is truly a beautiful thing. I will continue to feel uncomfortable exposing myself--but I shall not let this stop me any longer. If the goal is to become a professional and top-five writer of all time, well then I better accept the fact that for this to happen my work needs to be physically accessible for consumption. And last I will blog about whatever comes to mind: whether it's a complaint of propriety or a book review or the best way to tell if you've got a good sock underfoot (it must slide up your foot and past your ankle smoothly, with no jarring stops). This, dear friends, is The Vow. 

I look forward to our time together.

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*Hir: a genderless possessive pronoun, fusing "his" and "her."