The Disappointed Artist

I can’t write.

I really, really can’t. Each attempt, each smattering of words, leaves me shaking my head. My writing leaves me sad.

There is a marked discrepancy between the quality of what I write and what I read.

They say to follow your heroes and that in the process of absorbing their talent and their life, you will become more like them. But this doesn’t teach you how to write. Trust me, I’ve tried.

I have been a reader for all my life. I’m a perpetual reader, one who never really learned how to tell a good story, hoping that she could glean enough through constant reading to be able to parse what is and isn’t good and reappropriate it for works of her own.

Things are not that simple, though. My writing is dry and boring. It was once described to me as a close colleague as ‘decidedly unpretentious’, saying that it could really be well served by ‘a bit of linguistic flare.’ I have read every John Green novel since, yet my writing is still lacking in this respect.

It is just a sad truth that my words are not pretty. My words are tools. They are practical implements that are made to bludgeon, to hammer in a point, but nothing more. There is no lyrical rhythm, or vivid imagery, or even particularly deep metaphor. I just tell things like they are, and when I can’t draw on my real experiences, I fall. I tell truths, not stories. And then: only the truths that are accessible to me.

I do not write enough.

For someone who identifies as a writer, I don’t spend a lot of time writing. This may the antecedent to previously mentioned struggles, but it isn’t as if I am spending my time away from the form. The days that pass without my opening of a word processor don’t register to me as time wasted. Eventually, I feel the yearning after long enough without committing words to computer, but everything I write then is never any good.

I feel like I should have a longing to write and to watch my daily word count soar, but I’m pretty blase about the regularity to which I write. One hour a day in my office is never enough. Instead, I am always reading. You can’t become a successful reader, a professional reader.

Not without tenure, anyway.

This piece isn’t any good.

Maybe if my writing were any better, this would be cathartic.

There are people in my writing group who can tell a vivid and thought provoking story in just over 500 words. I am almost at 1,000 here, and I’ve said what amounts to practically nothing.

This piece is a knowing waste of time, a distraction from working on larger projects and from actually doing the work that pays my bills.

By working on this instead of an established project, I am falling into the trap I often set for myself where I procrastinate heavily through useless little essays that will never exist anywhere but here.

“Writing is of so little use in a file cabinet. . .”

Wilma Yeo said in a letter once, later quoted by her nephew. It’s true, but much of my writing exists relatively unseen, filed away in Google Drive. How can I accomplish anything, live off my writing, or even be proud of my creation if it exists in what is practically a vacuum? My work feeds off of other work, but will it forever be unable to give back? This one way relationship, the relentless take take take of my writing is as if it’s positioned on the wrong side of an unrequited love.

I am not sure if there is a right side of unrequited love.

Yet for someone to quote me, to plagiarize me, to build off my work, I must first produce something that is actually relevant and engaging and of quality. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, my writing will forever go unflattered.

I am surprised every time someone wants to read something I’ve written.

Usually, it is an essay that begs their inquiry.

I should take that as a sign I am not cut out to novel, but this puts great pressure on me to actively live an interesting life to write about.

I am not sure if this is easier or harder than imagining, but I know that the amount of stories I have to tell is unnervingly finite. It worries me I will be unable to do these stories any justice by the time that I run out of tales to tell.

My future art may lie in other’s stories, recording them and retelling them to make up for the inadequacies of my own daily life. That, or just making things up.

Every now and then I feel this burgeoning feeling of greatness.

Like I’m on the cusp of making something remarkable; like I can make something defining. Yet every time that feeling comes, it disappears, like a medicated delusion of grandeur. Every project that excites me soon gets me disinterested when I realize that, hey, I am lacking the fundamental writing abilities to make that really happen. I’ll start, and the first few sentences will make me scoff and realize that it is outside of my abilities.

Every essay collection, every short story, all of it results in me being deflated. The solution is not as easy as writing it and coming back to edit, because none of it is usable really anyways. My past writing reads better than anything I write currently. I do not know if this signs a lack of present inspiration, or an active degeneration of my craft. Does it really make any difference at this point?

Instead of writing it I’ll shrink up within myself, and return to reading. Actually, that sounds really nice right now.

Bye.