Writing Again

for some reason

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

- Thomas Mann

I got that quote from an essay I didn’t read by a writer who I don’t know, from a speech about screenwriting by Charlie Kaufman, one of my favorite filmmakers. That quote stuck with me, along with the whole speech actually, but that quote particularly, on several levels: firstly the surprise humor effect of flipping the idea of a writer on its head – if they were a writer, surely they would love writing, and therefore surely they would find it easy, or at least easier than other people, because they’re good at it. But the assertion is no, they wouldn’t, in fact just the opposite, which is somehow instantly graspable, intuitively, maybe because of the popular mythos of the writer as a particularly struggling sort of artist, alone in a room with a typewriter. Or maybe, as it was the case for me, because writers know that writing honestly is hard, and writing dishonestly so easy. Writers know best the treachery of words. This multilayered reaction to the quote was instantaneous and exhilarating.

I wanted to write tonight, when I was doing something else, on a whim, having not written anything in more than a year, as a sort of self-absorbed affirmation, that I can still write, and right now, wresting these words out of nothing, proving to myself that I still have it. I haven’t been writing, in the sense of “writing long-form in public”, because I’ve been doing other things with my time and I’ve been very busy in other meaningful vain creative pursuits like playing drums in rock bands and learning how to arrange music on a computer and adjusting to a whole new life on the other side of the world, and before that I was very busy preparing for that life-changing leap, and before that I was very busy maintaining the excuse of a job and life I had in exchange for not having made that leap earlier.

I write, now, again, totally as an amateur and with a new sense of what that means, even compared to when I wrote little jokes and less-little threads on Twitter about whatever cute thought puzzle or navel-gazey insight I’d come up with that day, on those times when I posted almost every night without fail, because at least back then I was serving an online persona, when I was more connected with my online friends and being On Twitter was a significant part of time, which now I can’t quite afford. I write now as a refreshingly different kind of amateur that writes only for this moment because I felt like hearing my writing voice. That’s why it’s self-absorbed. I’m here right now to absorb my self on this blank Word document, having been unstuck from the culture that birthed this voice or at least undoubtedly gave it much of its flavor. Having been unstuck, this voice is no longer speaking to that culture.

I’ve gone through several writing voices. In college when I was a “journalist” and “opinion writer” I quoted my literature and diligently rephrased my plagiarisms and arranged my bibliographies so tidily and my essays had a veneer of authority that worked its magic exclusively on other students at my school who didn’t quite have the drive to do that kind of thing with their free time, and it was a useful sort of voice to have, embarrassing as it is now to read that voice. I still reread those essays sometimes and I’m quite proud of them (I can allow myself to be proud, just today). Actually I still use that voice today for my post-graduate coursework. I even used a modified version of that voice in my old job, although it was for Powerpoint bullet points (doesn’t count).

It’s not my fault that that voice is good enough for most people and institutions, even though it’s not good enough for the cool internet nerds. So when I started posting online I developed a different voice, for speaking to the cool internet nerds. That came with a different persona – in college I was just a smart guy who writes long essays, and online I became a guy with vaguely interesting thoughts. Which is a downgrade in many ways, but it did allow for more communication, which was the point of writing, for me, at the time (barely anybody actually read the essays). Turns out it felt nice to have people respond to my writings, which was enough incentive to make me figure out how to make them respond to me, again and again. I was just so lonely. It was 2020 and so on.

At some point I started this Substack because I felt like I was just making people respond to me with my tweets and I wasn’t even sure I was communicating anything anymore. Writers know best the treachery of words. This column is called “I Really Mean It” because this is where I really do try to mean what I say. It’s easier when I pretend nobody’s watching. The publishing is just to barely satisfy the exhibitionist impulse inherent to the activity. And here I use this voice – the one I consciously experience as kind of cringe – though it’s even more cringe to mention that – where I’m excruciatingly demonstrating an attempt to be honest. This is just how I feel, see, I’m not stylizing anything, this is how I would speak to you (no one), I’m not putting on a voice. And that’s the voice now.

I’m just kind of here now as a blatant shameless taking-up of space and empty expression of my values, and that feels like the right kind of writing to be doing at the moment, especially because I’m meant to be doing something else. Just right now, I like being an empty saying-nothing kind of writer who just tries to be honest over and over again in what feels like a voice as I speak it into words. I’m also coming to realize there’s a sort of snark in my voice that’s a remnant of the culture that birthed it, that hides behind it a pathetic rage. This is again a downgrade, because before I wrote on the internet, and before I wrote for magazines, I was writing for myself in my room in anger, and it was a totally different voice, a voice I’m still trying to recover. So I think all of this is part of why writing is harder for writers than it is for other people. If I could scream in text form, I would.