I Will Attempt to Write Normally
November 3rd, 2010

I studied writing for seven years, during which time I considered myself a writer. I dressed like a writer, baggy organic fabrics in earth tones, floppy hair and wireframe glasses, elbow patches. I wrote poems about sex and loss, and stories about existential constraint. I stared longingly and with terrified absorption at things, seeking what I could call essential in them. 

It was work rooted in identity, rather than the opposite, and so doomed. I never liked to write. I don’t know if any writer really does, but they must at least be callous to the grinding roar of the argument that happens in your head while you sit in a silent room selecting what to risk writing down. I wasn’t, and Jesus Christ am I not now. Every word is against a headwind of other possible words.

But something has changed. I now have things I want to say. Through high school and college writing was for me a technology without a product. I wrote so much about sex and generalized emotions because they were the only facts of any gravity I could contribute to the world’s conversation, and even then I found their gravity suspect.

Now I have products, newly invented or discovered thoughts that I don’t find said elsewhere, and I’m ready to make and market them. I hope I still remember how to use this writing machine. Well, I’m sure I do. Rather, I hope I have the mind to resume its maintenance, while finally using it for what it was meant.