Joseph Grammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "brain"
Being Okay with Your Imperfect Brain
So I didn't even want to write this post, because I didn't have a "good enough" topic to discuss -- which is bullshit. Sure, if I was some powerful blog emir with a city's worth of followers, I might need to choose my words and ideas more carefully, but I'm not. I'm a dude sitting at an Ikea table with an oversized mug of coffee.
Accepting my place in life, especially when it comes to writing, is annoying as all hell, and not only because it reminds me I have no agent, or contract, or skills, really. I have a desire to write, and I write every day: that's what I have. (Plus, you know, a wonderful support system who actually gives a shit about me, which is inestimably valuable, but I don't really "have" them because you can't "have" a human being...this semantic tangent is not important.) No, accepting my place in life is also annoying because it feels good, and feeling good with what I have runs counter to my existing system of DO MORE, NOW, SLACKER, LOOK AT EVERYONE ELSE AROUND YOU.
Writing, to me, is about brain management. You push ahead with a story even while you acknowledge its plot gaps and awkward phrases, trusting that you're capable enough to go back later and sew up the holes with a relatively steady hand (even as I write this metaphor I'm seeing all the ways it fails to correctly describe the process, but c'est la V-neck, as American Apparel says.) You balance the crazy psycho-rush of inspiration with your mechanical outline of the book, have those two parts of your mind (emotional and logical) party together, and then choose a best path based on that mix of data.
It's a lot about integration for me: integration of the disparate, weird thoughts clanging around below my pia mater, integration of my idea of the story with what actually spills out on paper, integration of...well, the fake characters I made up and my own probably-real meat-covered human form.
Once I hit that point, it's a lot easier for me to accept that there will be huge mistakes in my book that I can't detect or fix, and that a lot of people who read the damn thing will probably hate it. Oh well. I can just move on down the path and write something new they might despise later. And for that one person who likes it, or at least thinks it was a moderately enjoyable use of her time: you're, ah, cool.
Accepting my place in life, especially when it comes to writing, is annoying as all hell, and not only because it reminds me I have no agent, or contract, or skills, really. I have a desire to write, and I write every day: that's what I have. (Plus, you know, a wonderful support system who actually gives a shit about me, which is inestimably valuable, but I don't really "have" them because you can't "have" a human being...this semantic tangent is not important.) No, accepting my place in life is also annoying because it feels good, and feeling good with what I have runs counter to my existing system of DO MORE, NOW, SLACKER, LOOK AT EVERYONE ELSE AROUND YOU.
Writing, to me, is about brain management. You push ahead with a story even while you acknowledge its plot gaps and awkward phrases, trusting that you're capable enough to go back later and sew up the holes with a relatively steady hand (even as I write this metaphor I'm seeing all the ways it fails to correctly describe the process, but c'est la V-neck, as American Apparel says.) You balance the crazy psycho-rush of inspiration with your mechanical outline of the book, have those two parts of your mind (emotional and logical) party together, and then choose a best path based on that mix of data.
It's a lot about integration for me: integration of the disparate, weird thoughts clanging around below my pia mater, integration of my idea of the story with what actually spills out on paper, integration of...well, the fake characters I made up and my own probably-real meat-covered human form.
Once I hit that point, it's a lot easier for me to accept that there will be huge mistakes in my book that I can't detect or fix, and that a lot of people who read the damn thing will probably hate it. Oh well. I can just move on down the path and write something new they might despise later. And for that one person who likes it, or at least thinks it was a moderately enjoyable use of her time: you're, ah, cool.
Build You Up
I used to spend most of my time in a hole. No people, no messages, just my own solo brainwaves talking to themselves, and most of the time they mentioned negative things.
Now I'm about building myself up and making change -- stories, etc. -- in my own shitty, unassuming way. You won't catch me organizing communities or hustling products, but you might see me around D.C., scribbling through notebooks and speaking bad Russian with a friend.
How do you make stuff? It depends; everyone's got a skill they can work with.
Don't know yours? Don't sweat it:
Just ask 50. (Plus check out that sweet PSP.)
Now I'm about building myself up and making change -- stories, etc. -- in my own shitty, unassuming way. You won't catch me organizing communities or hustling products, but you might see me around D.C., scribbling through notebooks and speaking bad Russian with a friend.
How do you make stuff? It depends; everyone's got a skill they can work with.
Don't know yours? Don't sweat it:
Just ask 50. (Plus check out that sweet PSP.)
Home as Memory
You live in your images of the past, like a real, someday taxable patchwork house that includes a whole wall of you browning out from booze in college (I pray you never drink Everclear "neat"). Also, that house is a big, sweaty lie, because your brain degrades memories like a jpeg file every time you click on it. Home is your memory, and your memory is busted, and words words words, we drift in an open void, meaning = self-made, relativism, but everything's somehow valid through connection, Glenn's not dead.
My point is it's cool to live in a human-sized, misinformed carnival--most of the time--especially if no real clowns (other than Puddles) factor in significantly.
Moral of the story: you're a husk, and all the snapchats inside that husk are where you live.
My point is it's cool to live in a human-sized, misinformed carnival--most of the time--especially if no real clowns (other than Puddles) factor in significantly.
Moral of the story: you're a husk, and all the snapchats inside that husk are where you live.
Empty Head
Sometimes, you need to let go and allow things to be exactly as they are. (And by sometimes, I mean all the fucking time, amiright??!?!!!!?%$##*&)
I'm right.
Writing is like dancing in that formal education is probably super-helpful for becoming a pro, but if you really push your peculiarities to the limit, you can still be pretty cool, as long as you're a nice autodidact who learns widely, listens to criticism, and preserves a deep, maddening love for your art without letting it become more important than other people.
If you're reading this now and you're unsure if you should start writing or continue writing, just know that you absolutely fucking goddamn should, because your words are important. And if somebody tells you they're not important, maybe they're right ... but you should still keep writing anyway. You're going to suck for a long time before you become remotely good, but it's really important to belittle yourself as little as possible, and to treat your art with the kind of love religious people probably feel in church.
If you do that, then by garsh (*Goofy chuckle as Evanescence roars in the background*), you just might make a swell helping of fiction.
So go do it.
I'm right.
Writing is like dancing in that formal education is probably super-helpful for becoming a pro, but if you really push your peculiarities to the limit, you can still be pretty cool, as long as you're a nice autodidact who learns widely, listens to criticism, and preserves a deep, maddening love for your art without letting it become more important than other people.
If you're reading this now and you're unsure if you should start writing or continue writing, just know that you absolutely fucking goddamn should, because your words are important. And if somebody tells you they're not important, maybe they're right ... but you should still keep writing anyway. You're going to suck for a long time before you become remotely good, but it's really important to belittle yourself as little as possible, and to treat your art with the kind of love religious people probably feel in church.
If you do that, then by garsh (*Goofy chuckle as Evanescence roars in the background*), you just might make a swell helping of fiction.
So go do it.
