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Writing is Stupid

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And no one should ever do it.

But if you absolutely insist on torturing yourself and all those around you, it’s worth at least doing it well and for the right reasons.

See if you can tell which of the following are The Right Reasons:

  • To gain the admiration and respect of throngs of people around the world
  • To display your genius
  • To get rich quickly
  • To correct everyone else’s stupidity
  • To live a life of leisure, free of care and concern
  • To prove your parents wrong
  • To show everyone how much better you are than every other writer that ever was
  • So you can look down on others
  • Because it makes you special
  • Because it’s easy

If you selected any of the above you are wrong.  There is no right reason to write, because writing is stupid and no one should ever do it, EVER.

But if you still think you should, know that it is one of the most difficult things in the world to say exactly what you want to say, and nothing more and nothing less.  Know that the more you study writing, the more you will realize how impossible it really is to fully capture That Thought or Dream in words.  And even if you happen to think you’ve captured it, you will come back later and read it again, and realize you could’ve done it so much better.

And if by some stroke of luck you happen to accidentally hit upon exactly what you wanted to say exactly the way you wanted to say it, which is unlikely, lots of people who read it will misunderstand what you were trying to say anyway, because they’ll misread it.  Not that “lots” of people will ever read what you wrote.  The vast majority of people will be completely unaware you exist.

Even if you are a wildly successful author, most of the people in the world will never have heard of you.  Of those that have heard of you, many won’t like you.  And even many of the people who like your work won’t be able to remember your name or recognize you in person.

You will never finish anything.  Because whatever It is could always be improved, if only you were a little better.

That Thing you spend years pouring yourself into, sacrificing countless mornings and lunches and nights that could be spent enjoying yourself?  Your audience will consume it in mere hours.  And forget most of it.

So don’t bother.  Writing is stupid and no one should ever do it.

Unless you simply must.  In which case none of the above should prevent you from doing it, because maybe, just maybe, you might be doing it for a reason that is something like right.

 

The Dignity of Cost

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Everybody likes free stuff.  Keychains, visors, bags, bobbleheads, burritos.  Free stuff always seems like a great idea.

At the time.

It’s usually later, when the rush of FREE has worn off, that you realize you have a bunch of junk sitting around and you don’t remember where it came from or why you ever thought you needed it in the first place. (Unless we’re talking about the free burrito, in which case you probably deserve whatever you’re suffering from because, come on man.)

The crazy thing is that even if The Free Thing really is something cool and valuable, we have a tendency to hold it in disregard because, I mean let’s face it, we got it for free after all.

If you’d asked me a decade ago if I would’ve liked to have sold my very first screenplay for $600k, I would’ve said yes absolutely thank you very much.  And I would’ve thought I was really something special and that writing was super easy and I probably would’ve blown all that cash on a lottery tickets because think about how much richer you could be if you won the lottery!

But ask me now that I’m older and wiser, and I would say

UHH ARE YOU KIDDING ME GIMME THEM DOLLARS!

Because I’m not an idiot.  And I would’ve taken your money and laughed at you behind your back, and you would’ve deserved it, because man that screenplay was pretty terrible.

But that’s all besides the point.  Which is to say, if I were paying an editor you likely wouldn’t have read any of that.  Which is to say, if you’d like this blog to be improved, you are more than welcome to send me large sums of cash, and if we reach a particular tipping point I might very well hire an editor to Cut Out the Nonsense and Get On to the Good Stuff.  The likely result of which would be that instead of all the clever, friendly, and good-looking people that hang out around here, this blog would be entirely peopled by tumbleweeds, cricket chirps, and empty blog posts.

MOVING ON.

The honorary doctorate is nice, but chances are you wouldn’t want one in your operating room.  “I’ve never actually done heart surgery you know, but I have done an awful lot of writing and speaking about the importance of heart healthiness, which Prestigious Institution of Higher Learning thought was awfully commendable, so I have this degree now, and I think we should all be fine!  Except maybe you.”

Paying for something out of your own pocket makes you an active participant in a meaningful transaction.  There is dignity in having paid the price.  We tend to respect and admire the man or woman who clawed from poverty to build an empire; the lazy son of inherited wealth less so.

Often They refer to it as “Paying Your Dues”.  But when They say it, They tend to make it sound like some sort of unnecessary hoop you just have to jump through for the sake of entertaining others.  But the Real Dues to Be Paid aren’t the artificial ones others impose upon you … the dues that matter are the ones you pay to yourself, in the wee hours of the morning full of writing when you’d rather be sleeping, or during the lunch breaks full of  exercise when you’d rather be filling your gullet with red meat and seven kinds of cheeses.  Mmm, cheeses.

 Because those are the dues that you will recall when you stand up on stage to receive All the Awards, and they are the ones that will remind you, by golly, you DO deserve All the Awards, and it’s not just some mistake or someone else’s charity.

Paying the cost is a necessary part of gaining ownership.  And ownership my friends, ah yes, that’s where the magic is.  Because when you have poured out the sweat and blood and tears to see That Work Accomplished, then you have won something no one can take away from you, no matter what they say about your pretentious blog posts or the fact that you don’t update it nearly as often as you should.

Inferior Products for Superior Causes!

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Sometimes it’s tempting to believe that The Cause is Good Enough to make up for less than your best.

Consider the Illustrious Public Restroom Hand Dryer, for example.  A brilliant device by any measure, it’s like a hair dryer for your skin.  Dries hands AND with a simple twist, FACES, if you so desire!  It saves trees!  And energy!  And reduces waste!  And your hands get just as dry as with the lowly, tree-gobbling, landfill-clogging, energy-sucking paper towel!

Except that it’s really noisy, and it takes a while, and doesn’t actually get your hands as dry as you’d like, and only one person can use it at a time, so when there’s a line you feel awkward standing there wringing your hands under a vent while a crowd of drippy-handed onlookers sighs heavily and vigorously mouths words at you that no one can hear because of the jet-engine-like howl coming out of the machine that somehow manages to do nothing but shepherd all the little drops of water around your flapping folds of hand-skin and maybe, if you’re lucky, scald you a little.

Not that I’m bitter, mind you.

Given the choice I should always use the hand dryer.  I should want to use the hand dryer.  I should long for hand dryers, nay, I should demand them, knowing the heavy price that I pay today makes the world an incrementally better place for all of the many generations of damp-handed skin-scalded children that will come after me.

Unfortunately the paper towel does a better job in less time, and I’m eco-insensitive and selfish.

Sadly, the same phenomenon affects any number of well-meaning individuals and organizations; charities, lemonade stands, churches.

Surely people will overlook the cheapness of the t-shirt, or the weakness of the lemonade, or the horrific lack of musicality from the worship team, because, by golly, it’s for Such a Good Cause.  We allow ourselves to cut corners and make excuses because the Cause will mean so much, you see.

Except that at the end of the day people can only maintain altruism for so long, and every time you take any amount of someone’s energy, or time, or money, or attention and in exchange provide them with something that leaves their hands raw and humid, they soon learn to associate Your Cause with something unpleasant.  Something to be borne, at best, and at worst, to be actively avoided.

Better to let someone’s altruism be its own reward than to give them a cheap token that makes them question whether you can even be trusted with the investment they just made.

Best to amaze someone with a truly incredible product or experience that gains you a Fan, amplifies The Message, and actually furthers The Cause.

Renting vs. Owning

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So there’s this thing about things.  Some things you can choose to rent or you can choose to own.  Things like cars, or apartments or houses, or tuxedos.  But usually not so much the toothbrushes or underpants.

Not so much.

Usually.

<shudder>

Renters typically put what they consider to be “reasonable” effort into maintaining the thing they’re renting.  They keep the car kind of full of gas or at least half or at least close to half, and they don’t grind the gears all that much.  They thoughtfully cover their wine spills with furniture.  They rarely do full splits on the dance floor and even if they did one or two they are quite certain the seams were already ripped like that anyway.

Owners, on the other hand, typically go above and beyond to take care of their stuff.  They park three-quarters of a mile away from the mall to avoid door dings.  They put a sheet over great-grandmother Thedalia’s settee and never let anyone sit on it or even look at it or go in the same room as it because IT’S OLDER THAN YOU AND WORTH MORE.  They reinforce the stitching on all the vest buttons because one looks a little wobbly and if you’re reinforcing one button, you might as well do them all.

“Reasonable effort” looks a lot different based on your level of personal investment.

Renters look at things in broad strokes, are content with the 80% (or 72% or 66.67%) result, and have very clear boundaries of what’s their responsibility and what is clearly someone else’s job.  CLEARLY SOMEONE ELSE’S JOB, he says, watching the drip-drip-drip through the ceiling.  He’s a tenant, not a plumber, after all.

Owners sweat the details.  Even with a 100%, they look for ways to get extra credit or to preemptively shore up potential weaknesses.  Everyone’s job is their job, if there’s something that needs to be done.  And while it’s nice for someone to notice and pat an owner on the back, owners will crawl on their bellies through mud and spiderwebs and the most horrifying of specimens (the camel cricket blech) to retrieve the frisbee from under the house not for thanks or credit but because by golly that frisbee is under their jurisdiction and as long as they are in charge NO FRISBEE GETS LEFT BEHIND.

Reasonable?  Depends on who you’re talking to.

So how about you … are you renting your Work, or are you owning it?

 

Uninspired vs. Unmotivated

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So, there’s really only ever one reason to actually Do the Work You Should Be Doing.  It’s, duh, because it’s something you should be doing. And of course there are somewhere between seventy-three and eleventy-seventeen billion reasons not to.  Like, you know, “Darn, this chair is too comfy!” or “Yes, but the remote is all the way over theeeere.”

I frequently find myself sitting on the couch thinking “I really should be doing That Thing” and then I immediately get up and get to work!

And by “immediately get up and get to work”, I mean “continue to sit there and feel guilty about how I’m not working.”

Generally all the Reasons Not To Do The Work fall into two big categories.  Either I feel Uninspired and make excuses, or I feel Unmotivated and make excuses.

Turns out, uninspired is fine.  Most work gets done by people who feel uninspired when they’re doing it. You know, the whole 10% inspiration/90% perspiration thing.  (That’s actually a lie, by the way.  Turns out, empirically-speaking, that inspiration is no more than 3%.)

Continuing to work when you’re Not Feeling Inspired is what we call “being a professional”. You were inspired at one point.  That’s a good sign.  Trust your gut and stick with it, and there’s a very good chance that Inspiration will reappear at some point to give you the jolt you need to carry you through a little farther.  At least until you Feel Uninspired again.

Unmotivated is a different flavor that they don’t serve at Baskin-Robbins but is probably available at Ben & Jerry’s.  Unmotivated frequently comes from a Lost Place, where it’s tough to see how the Work connects to Anything That Matters.  Unmotivated means you’ve lost sight of how what you’re doing right now (or rather That Thing You Should Be Doing Right Now) moves you further towards The <Noun> You Want to Be.

Calling it Unmotivation is sneaky because it makes it sound like it’s merely a lack of something, when in fact Unmotivation is a powerful force of Resistance that must be overcome.  And the way to stomp Unmotivation in its weak ankles is to back away from The Work and dream a little bit about what having accomplished The Work is going to do for you.  Stand in front of a mirror and remind yourself why you started it in the first place.  Sit down and interview yourself as if you’ve already completed The Work.  You know, like:

You: “So, you’re looking pretty amazing today.”

You: “Thanks.  I pretty much look amazing every day.  Also, I am clever.”

You: “I’ve noticed.  Let’s talk about The Work.  How do you feel after winning All the Awards?”

You: “Well, you know, for me, it’s never been about All the Awards.  I’m glad to have them, of course, but really I just wanted to do The Work because <spoilers redacted>”

And so on and so forth.  Dreaming about the end was likely what got you started in the first place. Take a moment to remind yourself about what’s waiting on the other side of Unmotivation, and then while he’s standing over you breathing out of his mouth thinking he’s stumped you for another day, FIST HIS EYEHOLE.

And then get to work.

In summary:

  • Uninspired? Do the work anyway.
  •  Unmotivated? Take a breather, dream a bit. Then do the work anyway.

 

Waiting Until You Feel Like It

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FACT:  Waiting until you Feel Like It is a great way to accomplish about 6% of what you’re capable of.

I know because I did the math.

While I was supposed to be writing.