Death of Inspiration
Show me a writer who thinks writing is easy and I’ll show you a homicidal maniac that has been cutting out letters from magazines to send “fan” letters to Markie Post and sees signs that she leaves for him in the clouds and in the credits of The Lion King.
Writing sucks. Praise rocks.
In college I took a course on Sam Beckett. I think his work is fascinating, weird and wonderful. I have to be in the right mood for it, and that mood has really only struck me twice, and I think it might again sometime in 2013. My professor’s thesis for the course was that Beckett was trying to stretch the limits of “story.” He was writing around the story and writing towards silence, thus each of his stories was shorter and shorter.
I think that’s fascinating. The same way that I think that someone actually has to write all the words on a coupon is fascinating, or the way that I wonder what you call the guy who rivets mailboxes.
I know that every story has already been told, but how arrogant is it to think that you are so talented that you’re going to write around a story or suggest a story and that will be good enough… brilliant even. That’s cheating.
Manufacturing a plot, creating a great character, figuring out how to say something that matters when all you have personally experienced is a white bread middle class existence is tough.
If you don’t have something really important to say, just shut up.
8:53:41 PM 
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