The Night Was Sid Vicious (Photo credit: Alexander Danling)
I wish I was a rock star.
To call it a breakthrough, may be a little on the dramatic side. But it’s something, a moment of clarity, a way to explain why my mind takes the inputs from my senses and without fail attempts to turn them into words. How can it be that everything I see, hear, touch, and smell – and even feel – turns into a collection of phrases in my mind – a mind with a subconscious that apparently has only one exit, a way out that is defined by blotches of ink crammed into the confines of four corners?
The answer, my friends, is my breakthrough: that I have a jumble of words jammed into my frontal lobe with fiction as the only funnel is a good thing. Because I AM a writer, and I create art. There, I said it.
Why is it that I hesitate to admit this? It’s true. I create art – novels and blog posts are my canvas, and whether they are any good doesn’t negate the fact that I believe them to say something more than merely the letters that form them. I’m not going to lose an ear here, I’m just saying it’s okay to say what I do is art. Some of it good, some of it bad. It’s still art, dammit.
Truth is, I wish I was rock star. There are more than just a few reasons why I’m not (pipe down, haters), most important of which is my very average musical abilities, below average singing voice, and strong aversion to having bras thrown at me. Okay, one of those is a little bit of a lie. My vocal abilities are way below average.
So this writing thing – it’s the closest to being a rock star I’m going to get, and this makes sense to me now.
I write dialogue because I can’t sing.
I write action because I can’t really play the guitar.
I write description because I can’t play the bass.
I write conflict and tension, because I can’t play the drums (even with two arms).
I write because I’ve always wanted to create music, and turning my words into art is the only way I know how. I write what I want to write because that’s the only way, I’m afraid to say, I can be punk rock (wearing converse at 35 doesn’t get me there). And if I reach my writing goals, not only will I create art, I may just be that rock star too (go ahead and throw bifocals, I can handle it).
Categories: Writing
eternal Domnation 
Sorry I can’t throw my bifocals at you. I need them to read your blog posts! 🙂
I almost spit out my coffee!!! Thank you 🙂
No throwing…just agreement. Funny how we writers have that twitch (or what I call nervous tick!) every now and again to yell at the world -I`m a writer damn`it! *laugh* We create…therefore it`s art *nodding* (Why do I feel a snort coming on? But it sounds so pretentious though doesn`t it?) Okay I`m going to stop. Love the post!
:). I love it! Thank you!
Rock stardom comes in many forms. The page is your stage! Embrace…you are a writer! Yes…you create art! But you won’t convince us until you’re convinced. (And…wear the converse with pride! The humble converse serves us well.)
Just bought a new pair!
Lovely post. Rock on.
Rock on indeed. Thank you for supporting me- much appreciated!!!!
Writing is art. It’s also craft, skill, talent, and persistence. You have all of these, my friend. Writing is also isolation, and it lacks the immediacy of live music performance. I’ve always envied the relationship between performer and audience. Over the years, I have done my fair share of spoken word (open mics and whatnot) and it’s a nice taste of rock starness. If you haven’t given it a try, I highly suggest that you do.
You might want a shot or twelve of whiskey before you hit the stage.
It would have to be 12, my friend! Thank you man I really appreciate it. I get the isolation part of it – it has to be that way, which makes it okay. It certainly is a a factor of hard work and persistence. Failure is not an option, even if the measure of success is a sliding scale. And by the way, the punk rock reference has been used before – on a review of your book! Hope to get there one day…
You will. And it will be glorious!