Writing Makes Me Fat
I have found, at last, after sixty years of wanting to write something worth a person’s time to read, that there is nothing about having the skills involved in writing that demands mastery, only repetition.
The repetition I’m talking about here is the ability to let go of anything and everything once you sit down to begin whatever it is; poetry, essay, novel, anything.
Let go.
I understand, of course, people are exceptional in every walk of life, including the arts. Photographers just keep taking photos. Actors keep right on acting; a stand-up comedian gets shouted from the stage a thousand times but continues to tell jokes. Things are difficult in life, filling a page with words isn’t nearly as difficult as delivering a baby through a vagina.
Writing for me is going from sleep to being wide awake. I see an opening, literally, and everything about me, eyes, mind, heart, and body wants to push right through it.
Writing is practice.
For many it might be discipline, but that doesn’t work for me, discipline gets in the way of drinking, where practicing repetition does not.
Writing, writing, writing…does one thing for me that most other things do not; it makes me fat. Ive become writing’s Fatty Arbuckle. I get up every day to practice being a fit human being. I’m tired of yoga goddesses, new zen ideas, pissed off with diets, tried every magic pill, danced my frigging arse off, but nothing is going to do it for me. Hard work is a hateful idea. Does anybody do that anymore?
I like to use the enlightenment strategy, when the weight comes off your damn shoulders and the clouds lift. There should be a great whisky called Enlightenment. It’s to go from saddened to floating. It’s relief.
Beats the shit out of running.
Maybe, in reading this, you, too, are a writer. If you’re a hard-working writer, I have absolutely no respect for you. You can listen to every tutor, read every book, attend classes in creative writing, it makes you an asshole. A slave to the craft.
Have you ever been told there are certain tools you need? Here’s the only one you really need. You can thank me later with fifty claps. Be fucking alive, that’s it. Be awake, be open, surrender to every stupid grammar law you ever read about, and just write.
You know what I’m saying.
Look, there are other things to do, I get that. Same for me, if I don’t get them done the fucking lights go out, then I’m working in the dark. For some of you, it’s probably the shits, right? Writing is something you only get to do an hour a day, why? Because you’re a single parent bringing up a child, trust me, I’ve been there. But all the difficult shit; all the differences, they are all interwoven, they are interdependent, interconnected.
But do it, write. Because otherwise, it shuts down, it gets dull, and when it gets dull, we’re gone.
Let’s all agree, so that no-one is left in doubt, I’m wholly enlightened right now.
Macallan spirit guidance accepted.
So, the way it is, if I weren’t guided by my spirit of choice, if I weren’t letting go, flying, I’d know there’s not enough oxygen to my brain, and there’s only one way to get oxygen to your brain: it’s to move.
Damn near impossible when writing.
I know. I should have walked on the mountain yesterday, or gone someplace, trod the empty virus infected streets of London to get myself inspired, but I ain’t going there. It’s a filthy damn place. Nor am I going to sit on a mountain, you know what I’m saying? I don’t need to do that.
I like to do things that destroy that whole creative juices thing. I prefer to do the things that are life-enhancing, right Mac?
Nowhere above have I said, this is how I do it, and you can too. Where I’m coming from is a much more volatile place. It truly comes from the fact that there is no choice anymore. This is my enlightenment. I’m not going to become the writer I once imagined. I’m talking about enlightenment from the gutter.
My message might not seem very loving, very positive. There’s no question about that. If you make choices, if you practice the art of wanting more, opening up, being willing to do the work, take the steps I was too late to take, then there will be rewards.
I’m taking Mac out for a walk, moving, getting oxygen to my brain.
