So you want to be a writer?
Writers are likely to be the professionals with the greatest amount of stereotypes that exist. To start with the assurance by most people that being a “writer” is not a legit profession. Besides that, there are a great number of clichés that movies throw at us about how writers should behave, live and be like. TV shows like Californication and the recent web celebrity status of Charles Bukowski are good examples of that, like most glamorous ideas some are true while others are just ridiculous and makes me wonder: “Who the hell thought of that?”
But let me address something about writing before we kick the ball off. There are two kinds of writers: those who write because they have something to say and those who write because they want to get something out of it. If you are young and relatively inexperienced as a writer I will bet that you are in the second group. You know writing at late hours of the night while everybody is sleeping, a bottle of Jack besides the computer, an ashtray full with points of dead cigarets and a rude attitude of “fuck you all… I am a genius!” . It does sounds glamorous doesn’t it? Well, there isn’t a positive thing about it, let me tell you.
Then I have to say that you are writing for the wrong reasons. You will bleed way too quickly, read way too much and have an inflated ego. You write but chances are that nobody is reading what you put out there. You will blame them, but in fact you sound fake as fuck. C’mon who the hell at the age of 20 has gone through a divorce, knows the in’s and outs of sorrow and writes from the emotional center of his sadness? You don’t even know what sadness is. They tell you to write all the time, they tell you to send articles to the school newspapers and to the local magazine, go to writers group, be part of a creative writing class… It’s all bullshit! Have any of those persons been published? Yeah, I just kinda guessed it.
I am one of those few cases who was lucky enough to been published and combining that with the fact that I don’t take advice from people who don’t know what they are talking about, I tend to believe that I became a pretty decent writer. Well, I get paid to write, that must mean something. So, allow me to be a self-entitled prick and tell you what is your first mistake in your writing career:
To be a fucking writer!
The problem of wanting to be a writer is that you glue yourself to certain steryotypes that will be harmful for your evolution, you will stop enjoying reading books since you are obviously way more interested in the grammar, the structure and the placement of commas. You will stop doing fun and exciting things because that is what writers are supposed to be: boring, intellectually superior and distant. You might very well become a master of putting words together, the problem with that is that nobody gives a fuck about it.
Do you know why a good article is a good article? Because it has a message, because it communicates something in a clear way. Because the writer was not even thinking about the words, his priority was to write right from his emotional center and he is only able to do that because he went through shit and came back, because he didn’t became an addict because nowadays is fashionable… No, he became an addict because that was his way of healing his pain, he became a tormented human being because his wife let him, his father used to beat the shit out of him every Thursday night, because he fucked so much that he got an infection on his dick and it decomposed it, the poor guy can’t even cum nowadays!
That’s why. You might fake it, but it will suck and nobody will buy it.
Do you know why Hemingway wrote such amazing pieces? Because he had been in the Spanish Civil War as an ambulance driver literally fighting for his life. Do you know why Kerouac was so creative? Because the dude was an alcoholic, a poor bum and depressed as fuck, not because he intended ever to be it. Same thing with Bukowski, I mean Charles might have been one of the most miserable human being in existence: he was always angry, hanging over, depressed and it happened to him to write about his condition so clearly that it is fucking genius!
No one ever reads Charles or Kerouac and says: “Well, I got nothing out of this besides the lack of depth of it and have no idea of what it means, but it is written in such a beautiful technical way that is marvelous!“, of course not! People say in fact the opposite: “Fucking shit, this guy was a lunatic but that sure is good” nobody cares about typos, poor gramar and simple diction.
Believe it or not but a deep, true and beautiful message can make a writer who can’t even finish a sentence in logical order appear as genius. Forget about all that being perfect, perfect is boring and nobody likes it. So for now I highly advise you to stop writing for a while, to actually stop reading! Yes, you heard me write Mr. bookworm. What I want you to do is to only pick up a pen when you have your chest burning and you have to take out that steaming hot piece of coal out of. This will come easily when you are doing something different and that you are not used to, believe me.
I won’t lie to you and say that I became a good writer from one moment to the other, that it all just happened. No, I have more hours of sitting in front of a laptop hammering down the keyboard than I like to admit but one thing is for sure: I wouldn’t be as good as I am if I haven’t lived as full as I try to. Everything that is good and authentic about my writing came from having my heart broken, from having travelled from Eastern Europe to Portugal by train for 3 weeks solo, it was from having been kidnapped in fucking Albania and having my head cracked upon in one of the poorest countries in Europe. It was from having slept on the floor of strangers for over 3 months, for having Road Tripped through North America and dropping out of a Masters because of it, it was because once in my life I only thought about having as much sex as I could. It was about hanging with people much smarter than I am. It was because I had to run for my life in the streets of Serbia. It was having gone through a depression and having nobody to help me and having to fight my way through. It was sending emails to out of reach people asking for so much that it is ridiculous and once in a while receiving a “yes”.
All of this shaped the way I write. It gave me a perspective, an unique voice that isn’t mistaken for somebody’s else. It wasn’t the grammar, the technical books, the fucked up seminars lead by someone who highest achievement was to get a degree in a private school. I have no idea when to put a comma if you ask me objectively, I don’t really know or care where the predicate should be, where the subject must be put and how a phrase should be arranged to give space to a passive voice. I don’t know it and I never needed it so far, – this tends to piss off people who see themselves as highly knowledgeable, grammatically correct and intellectually superior, which I find it fun and makes me laugh.
(Every person who considers himself as an intelectual I know that they are not only a complete bore but also a presumptuous coward, since the tend to never publish a thing, but like to point out how much they know. I rather read a piece of a ten years convict than of a Phd in the romanticism of XIX century England any time, any day.)
To write is easy. Nowadays everybody is a writer, you can even pay for getting published or self-publish your work. The true challenge is in having people following you, reading what you write and making you a true writer. Without them you are nothing. This is why if you don’t write because you have something to say it will be very difficult to face the fact that nobody is interested in what you write since you’re writing for an higher goal, for something beyond writing. You will lack the honesty, the vulnerability and the authenticity. You will be like a disposable plastic doll.
The only way to be a writer, or an artist, is because you have that hot piece of coal burning inside your chest and you have to take it out. Otherwise you will burn out too quickly, the hours of typing will become a prison, you will not endure the pain in your fingers or in the lower back, consequence of spending so much time sat in the same position. You will not survive while your friends go to work and have empty conversations and you are writing for your life. You will bleed too quickly.
That’s the only way, to hammer down those keys at 10 a.m. of a cold rainy Monday morning, hair all disheveled, skipping shower and food, clothes spread around the bedroom and one semi-hot coffee mug. You would smoke if you had money for it. You would go to parties and have a girlfriend, but it is burning and you have to bleed it out and create some real magic.
Then you will be a writer. I guess that some stereotypes are in fact true.
Originally published in: www.adventurousartist.com
But let me address something about writing before we kick the ball off. There are two kinds of writers: those who write because they have something to say and those who write because they want to get something out of it. If you are young and relatively inexperienced as a writer I will bet that you are in the second group. You know writing at late hours of the night while everybody is sleeping, a bottle of Jack besides the computer, an ashtray full with points of dead cigarets and a rude attitude of “fuck you all… I am a genius!” . It does sounds glamorous doesn’t it? Well, there isn’t a positive thing about it, let me tell you.
Then I have to say that you are writing for the wrong reasons. You will bleed way too quickly, read way too much and have an inflated ego. You write but chances are that nobody is reading what you put out there. You will blame them, but in fact you sound fake as fuck. C’mon who the hell at the age of 20 has gone through a divorce, knows the in’s and outs of sorrow and writes from the emotional center of his sadness? You don’t even know what sadness is. They tell you to write all the time, they tell you to send articles to the school newspapers and to the local magazine, go to writers group, be part of a creative writing class… It’s all bullshit! Have any of those persons been published? Yeah, I just kinda guessed it.
I am one of those few cases who was lucky enough to been published and combining that with the fact that I don’t take advice from people who don’t know what they are talking about, I tend to believe that I became a pretty decent writer. Well, I get paid to write, that must mean something. So, allow me to be a self-entitled prick and tell you what is your first mistake in your writing career:
To be a fucking writer!
The problem of wanting to be a writer is that you glue yourself to certain steryotypes that will be harmful for your evolution, you will stop enjoying reading books since you are obviously way more interested in the grammar, the structure and the placement of commas. You will stop doing fun and exciting things because that is what writers are supposed to be: boring, intellectually superior and distant. You might very well become a master of putting words together, the problem with that is that nobody gives a fuck about it.
Do you know why a good article is a good article? Because it has a message, because it communicates something in a clear way. Because the writer was not even thinking about the words, his priority was to write right from his emotional center and he is only able to do that because he went through shit and came back, because he didn’t became an addict because nowadays is fashionable… No, he became an addict because that was his way of healing his pain, he became a tormented human being because his wife let him, his father used to beat the shit out of him every Thursday night, because he fucked so much that he got an infection on his dick and it decomposed it, the poor guy can’t even cum nowadays!
That’s why. You might fake it, but it will suck and nobody will buy it.
Do you know why Hemingway wrote such amazing pieces? Because he had been in the Spanish Civil War as an ambulance driver literally fighting for his life. Do you know why Kerouac was so creative? Because the dude was an alcoholic, a poor bum and depressed as fuck, not because he intended ever to be it. Same thing with Bukowski, I mean Charles might have been one of the most miserable human being in existence: he was always angry, hanging over, depressed and it happened to him to write about his condition so clearly that it is fucking genius!
No one ever reads Charles or Kerouac and says: “Well, I got nothing out of this besides the lack of depth of it and have no idea of what it means, but it is written in such a beautiful technical way that is marvelous!“, of course not! People say in fact the opposite: “Fucking shit, this guy was a lunatic but that sure is good” nobody cares about typos, poor gramar and simple diction.
Believe it or not but a deep, true and beautiful message can make a writer who can’t even finish a sentence in logical order appear as genius. Forget about all that being perfect, perfect is boring and nobody likes it. So for now I highly advise you to stop writing for a while, to actually stop reading! Yes, you heard me write Mr. bookworm. What I want you to do is to only pick up a pen when you have your chest burning and you have to take out that steaming hot piece of coal out of. This will come easily when you are doing something different and that you are not used to, believe me.
I won’t lie to you and say that I became a good writer from one moment to the other, that it all just happened. No, I have more hours of sitting in front of a laptop hammering down the keyboard than I like to admit but one thing is for sure: I wouldn’t be as good as I am if I haven’t lived as full as I try to. Everything that is good and authentic about my writing came from having my heart broken, from having travelled from Eastern Europe to Portugal by train for 3 weeks solo, it was from having been kidnapped in fucking Albania and having my head cracked upon in one of the poorest countries in Europe. It was from having slept on the floor of strangers for over 3 months, for having Road Tripped through North America and dropping out of a Masters because of it, it was because once in my life I only thought about having as much sex as I could. It was about hanging with people much smarter than I am. It was because I had to run for my life in the streets of Serbia. It was having gone through a depression and having nobody to help me and having to fight my way through. It was sending emails to out of reach people asking for so much that it is ridiculous and once in a while receiving a “yes”.
All of this shaped the way I write. It gave me a perspective, an unique voice that isn’t mistaken for somebody’s else. It wasn’t the grammar, the technical books, the fucked up seminars lead by someone who highest achievement was to get a degree in a private school. I have no idea when to put a comma if you ask me objectively, I don’t really know or care where the predicate should be, where the subject must be put and how a phrase should be arranged to give space to a passive voice. I don’t know it and I never needed it so far, – this tends to piss off people who see themselves as highly knowledgeable, grammatically correct and intellectually superior, which I find it fun and makes me laugh.
(Every person who considers himself as an intelectual I know that they are not only a complete bore but also a presumptuous coward, since the tend to never publish a thing, but like to point out how much they know. I rather read a piece of a ten years convict than of a Phd in the romanticism of XIX century England any time, any day.)
To write is easy. Nowadays everybody is a writer, you can even pay for getting published or self-publish your work. The true challenge is in having people following you, reading what you write and making you a true writer. Without them you are nothing. This is why if you don’t write because you have something to say it will be very difficult to face the fact that nobody is interested in what you write since you’re writing for an higher goal, for something beyond writing. You will lack the honesty, the vulnerability and the authenticity. You will be like a disposable plastic doll.
The only way to be a writer, or an artist, is because you have that hot piece of coal burning inside your chest and you have to take it out. Otherwise you will burn out too quickly, the hours of typing will become a prison, you will not endure the pain in your fingers or in the lower back, consequence of spending so much time sat in the same position. You will not survive while your friends go to work and have empty conversations and you are writing for your life. You will bleed too quickly.
That’s the only way, to hammer down those keys at 10 a.m. of a cold rainy Monday morning, hair all disheveled, skipping shower and food, clothes spread around the bedroom and one semi-hot coffee mug. You would smoke if you had money for it. You would go to parties and have a girlfriend, but it is burning and you have to bleed it out and create some real magic.
Then you will be a writer. I guess that some stereotypes are in fact true.
Originally published in: www.adventurousartist.com
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