On Writing

Sometimes it just tumbles out of you. The preceding poems, for example, are chopped up into line breaks, partly for effect (the eye slows down when reading line breaks, and this induces a certain gravitas to the poem--which is why so much bad poetry is hilarious: ponderous line breaks emphasizing triteness) and partly because that's how they came: piecemeal, yet with a felt thematic unity.

And most of the time you grind. That's when it is especially important to have solid sentence structure. For example, in the above paragraph, a lazy marker in an English tutorial might mark the contents of the parenthetical remark as "awk". And it is undoubtedly "awk". But that's because the thought popped out, hung there for a second, and I have enough experience at this to know that if I had finished my well-constructed foregoing sentence, it would have disappeared. So one of the best markers of inspired writing is grammatical sloppiness.

I say it's a marker, not a necessary condition. States of mind change all the time, so sometimes they hit that perfect harmony of sentence structure and idea generation. That is the best kind of inspiration. That is what a writer lives for. It sucks if the ideas are bad, but there is nothing more rewarding than to write them anyway.

Now this marker can be co-opted to simulate inspiration. This is why one feels justifiable contempt for self-indulgent stream-of-consciousness writers. You can't oppress them with the rigid rules of your grammar, man. Their writing vibrates with the music of the spheres, which is beyond any earthly language. They are in direct communion with God.

Bull. Shit. Writing is a skill of integrating thoughts that seem important with the generative grammatical capacities of human cognition. Sometimes, in fact most of the time, it is right and appropriate to play with it, for that is how you hone the skills so that one day you can say the most awesome thing most clearly. This, like any skill-building exercise (pick your favourite), is a grand old time. Massive dopaminergic activity reinforcing further seeking behaviour with the occasional blast of endorphins titrated for maximum effect given the current general state of your nervous system. That's awesome. Who wants anything more? Sorry, kids. When a sculptor makes a statue, she's not "communing with the Forms", she's doing something she is good at, likes to do, and can keep doing indefinitely with more material.

I feel sorry for those who demand more of this. So please, drop your "transcending the boundaries" discourse. You'll transcend local boundaries, sure, if you're doing it right and growing as a writer. Don't make it a cosmic thing. It's your thing.

How did this turn into a rant about metaphysics?

Consider: "No matter how substandard you feel your skill or talent may be, If you never produce your art, the world will always remain deprived of it. "