On Writing
“As a work gets more autobiographical, more intimate, more confessional, more embarrassing, it breaks into fragments. Our lives aren't prepackaged along narrative lines and, therefore, by its very nature, reality-based art—underprocessed, underproduced—splinters and explodes."
– David Schields
And here we are. Behold my explosion.
The above quote is from a book by David Shields called Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. I haven't read it. Another David Shields book I haven't read, called Enough About You, has sat on my bookshelf since 2002. I know the year, exactly, because it's a hardcover book and I bought it new. I don't often buy hardcovers. Rarely, I care enough about a book not to wait for the paperback to come out. Hell, more often than not, a book will be out forty or fifty years before I read it. I once considered applying to an MFA writing program. The application requirements included a 1000-word reaction paper to something written within the last ten years. Nothing on my bookshelf fit the bill, so I headed to my local bookstore's latest releases table. I felt like an intern going through the slush pile. "Fuck it, I can't afford grad school, anyway," I'm sure I said, before wandering to the aisles of books edited by time.
So why did I spend 22 bucks on a new hardcover, less than 200 pages long, that I never finished reading? Well, 2002 happens to be the year I started blogging, and I felt inspired by a quote that opened the book:
"I know of nothing more difficult than knowing who you are, and having the courage to share the reasons for the catastrophe of your character with the world." – William Gass
I could have just written the quote on a piece of paper, or enough of it at least to Google it when I got home, but I didn't want to risk it. In desperate need of reassurance, I found the quote energizing. I could flatter myself that I engaged in a noble pursuit, courageously standing naked before the world. "Réalisant mon espoir. Je me lance vers la gloire!"
Reading the William Gass quote, now, it doesn't hold the same power for me that it did ten years ago. After all, sharing the catastrophe of your character with the world these days is as simple as updating your Facebook status.
Not that blogging ever really took courage. Back then, the only people who read my blog, or even knew it existed, were other bloggers spewing the same flotsam I was. Not to mention that I was in the midst of an existential crisis and didn't have a lot to lose anyway.
For some reason, however, although I have far fewer readers and am hardly sharing anything with "The World," I feel like it does take courage to write. Even though I'm not sharing any great catastrophes (or perhaps it's because I'm not), it feels like I'm at a podium with the house lights on. I feel so much more self-conscious.
But with no work to keep me busy, eating more peanut butter than is good for me, I turn to writing again, regardless. If only I hadn't lost so much momentum.
Courage! Today is the first day of the rest of my site.
