The Blank Page and Its Discontents

I have half a mind to start blogging again–starting and editing and ending in the WordPress text editor to see what happens. It’s interesting because when I blogged as a teenager, I felt like I was unique and that the thoughts I had were new and exciting and un-thought-of-before. Now, at 34, I understand that that really wasn’t the case–I wasn’t already a great writer just because I was unique, and I wasn’t all that unique to begin with. That’s not to shit on the writing I did back then. The prose and poetry on this site is testament to the fact that I was able to bring to life my voice for the first time. But I know now mostly that there was a lot of room for growth and a lot of room for lessons.

But this sort of worldliness and understanding regarding my place as a writer has only made it harder to come up with stuff to write. Now all of a sudden I have these great doubts about whether or not I can even put two words together. Ideating is the most difficult part of the process for me; I am always blown away by people who come up with new, quality, ideas on the fly and off the cuff. I writhe and I struggle and I wrestle with finding new ideas that I love, or that I think would be worth writing.

That’s a big part of why I’m making this blog post, and hopefully the ones to come: I want to shed this struggle and instead focus on output. I am working on a novel called Avalanche and definitely need to have more stuff that I can put in front of people. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. It might be a residual concern from when I was freebasing shame: get famous Evan, why aren’t you famous yet, Evan, you’re supposed to have a big massive mind why haven’t you done anything with it, Evan, you shit all over college, Evan, and only lately have you come around to writing as a means unto itself and not as means to another dream but it was ultimately those other dreams like film that hampered your ability to write. The screenplays that you got so good at crafting have now turned against you in the form of missing details in your prose.

I need to remember that I am writing for myself now, not some imaginary audience while mitigating their perceptions or opinions of my work. Working in customer support was a microcosm of this, and may have seeped itself into my thoughts on writing. With support, you’re constantly bombarded with chats, calls, and emails. Everything has an audience and I would obsessively think about customer reactions. I would lay in bed thinking of the best words to send with consideration to their reaction. And so it is with writing too, except that the audience is imaginary and not a customer in need. With every word and every idea I put too much thought and consideration into what people will think, or if they’ll even think it’s interesting. Yet I’m supposed to be writing for myself. I’m supposed to write what makes me happy, not some imaginary person sitting on the couch with a cat in their lap while they read my words. Not some made-up facsimile of my suppositions on what they’re liking about my words.

I feel like I don’t talk to enough people these days because I work from home. I don’t really get the chance to interact with people offline on a daily basis. It’s kind of a lonely existence, honestly, holed up in my room all day, and it doesn’t provide daily input or topics of conversations that can wend their way into my writing. I don’t talk to people a lot other than my parents and my girlfriend. I’ve realized recently that this is the least I’ve ever interacted with people in my life.

And so here we are, kinda sorta stuck in a rut with Avalanche but not wanting to admit it; and desperate to write still. Maybe this will lead to more posts, although I have my doubts about any sort of an audience. Fuck it, whatever, this one’s for me.