Fuck Writing Maxims

Thanksgiving Eve. It is almost midnight and, rather than sleeping, I’m working on the iPad, attempting to snap out of my writer’s block. Call it Honeymoon Hangover; upon my return from London a few weeks ago, ramping up again has been difficult. The words stumble out; the ideas, if they come at all, are hardly worth chasing.

No going to London.

Colm Taiban

A few minutes ago, I refreshed my Twitter timeline to find a quote concerning the craft of writing. I can’t remember the first sentence and, preferably, I don’t want to dig it up for quote. I closed the program in mid-scan, murmured “enough” under my breath and opened up my blank word document.

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.

Zadie Smith

I’m sick of maxims. I don’t want to hear anymore about what to write, how to write, when to write and why I should follow some truism the originator barely follows, let alone trusts. I’m tired of the compact, convenient, vacuum packaged advice designed, at first glance, to help the beginning writer, even though the advice’s true value, so to speak, is its ability to trigger confusion.

Maxims are scripture from the religion of literature, meant to provide guidance like pseudo North Stars. Because, as you know:

• you should write in the morning (or night)
• you should outline (or let it all hang out)
• you should research (or make it all up…unless it’s nonfiction & you’re you-know-who with the current MFA sweatshop scam).

I’m tired of the Vonnegut quotes, the Zadie Smith musings, the little nuggets pried from Junot Diaz’s life—all in the name to spark a flicker of hope in the hearts of writers who’ll never get published or read. Harsh but—what can I say?—I’m in a I-don’t-give-a-fuck mood right now.

“If you stay positive, it sounds really Pollyanna-ish, but it’s a lot easier to get shit done and get out of that fucking hole.

Junot Diaz

Or perhaps I’m speaking for myself because recently, writing is a joyless, dry-hump experience where I’m looking in the mirror. How can I describe the struggle?

It’s knowing what I want to say and, as I begin to write, the voices rise from some bog located in my brain. It’s a matter of an underdeveloped belief in my own personal writing process. The side effect of looking for an easier way to write; which is to say, mimicking the methodologies of past craft-masters: finding myself so out-of-tune with my way of writing that the work suddenly seems foreign to my eyes and ears. Perhaps the prose works–it might even be publishable–but it isn’t mine. I didn’t do it my way. I didn’t experience the very thing those craft-masters needed to share their advice in the first place: discovery. Rather, I imitated.

Sound like yourself

Kurt Vonnegut

I’m considering Draconian countermeasures: unfriend the writers; defrock the experts; unfollow the alleged conduits between me and the Publishing Dream. Put down the pipe, in other words, and remember the reasons, the motivations that lie dormant inside me, and find the will to adhere to their whims. The closer I am to my motivations, to myself, the sooner the stray notes of my personality will collide into a kaleidoscopic writing process, wholly unique to me, to my ticks and moods.

To that last point, it may not require heavy-handed, anti-social activities. It’s about me. Pawning off my issues to other people, friends and blog usernames alike, is disingenuous and ultimately, counterproductive. That said, it’s not supposed to be like this. Writing shouldn’t become a futile, exacerbating mind-fuck that renders me immobile and unswayed by the piece at hand. So what’s the remedy?

Do not pay any attention to the rules other people make…. They make them for their own protection, and to Hell with them.

William Saroyan

It comes down to a dismissal of the advice, to bid the maxims adieu, to salute and wish them well. In retrospect, they surfaced one truth: famous, published, literary giants are as fucked in the head as I am. The writing advice industry, replete with guidebooks and blogs, exists as a result of our inherent uncertainty in the validity of our works, both what we generate and how we generate them. As for me?

It is Black Friday. Our artificial Christmas tree is to my right, erect and illuminated, hungry for gifts at its feet. Our dog paces the apartment in search of a playmate; my wife sits on the ottoman, hand over mouth, watching a zombie flick. I’m wearing a newsboy cap and Ray Ban eyeglasses, embracing my foray into douchebaghood, as I listen to Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind. I’m at my desk now, working on the iMac, and I’m feeling exposed, that I might want to reel back the personal truths espoused, to swap them for tempered rants written in the third person.

You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn’t hold up. There are no rules or particular sensibilities. I don’t believe in that at all anymore.

Jamaica Kincaid