I think I'm one of the worst writers I know. But I keep trying.
I knew at the age of 11 that I wanted to be the best writer I could be. But 10 years later, I now know that I can only be the as good as I am now--unoriginal, unfocused, no sense of prodigiousness whatsoever.
Being an English major has convinced me of this irrefutable truth, so I've given up trying to write like I'm a frickin' genius, because I'm not. I'm just the average over-thinking, critical-minded, satirist-wannabe. So here I am, writing as the only person I know I write like-- me.
The reception I get on my pieces is mostly none. The poem of dry, brittle leaves blowing in the wind gets more of an applause than mine about the dialogue of the guy who sits in front of 7-Eleven talking to himself. So what do I get exactly? Crickets. Just a no-question silence with a whiff of offense and WTF reactions.
Some other student blatantly says that he wrote his short story last night. He gets a generous clap-clap-clap with a ha-ha or two. When it comes to mine that I spent the whole week on, what do I get? Crickets.
So, yeah, I guess that means I suck, don't I? Well, I think I can live with that.
What the English world has taught me is that the public is not as open to free-styling as I thought it was. They want to hear generic goodness such as the innocence of children, or a poem about grass being green, or being sad about someone dying-- things that evoke that "aww" feeling. They don't want to hear about the homeless guy who refuses to move into the shelter because of his dog, or the prostitute who hates everyone, or the pregnant drug-using twenty-three-year-old.
Their initial reaction: Oh, reality! Run away!
So I guess sometimes, if you want be the best you can be at something and put your heart into it, everyone will ignore you. Present yourself at your worst, put no thought into it, do what everyone else does and has done for centuries, and they will worship you.
At least, this is how it works with writing.
Now feeling rejected by the people who were supposed to encourage me, I've subjected myself to sucking at what I'm best at, for as long as it takes for someone to appreciate my ideas.
But for now, all I hear is crickets.
I read it. I wasn't going to comment though. Didn't really think it thru, just an unconscious decision. Don't feel too bad. When I first joined Facebook for some reason I thought it was a forum for intellectual discussion. My first message was, "I'm reading something by Charles Bukowsky called 'Ham and Cheese'. He's supposed to be a famous American writer but I never heard of him. Anyone heard of him?" Response - crickets.
ReplyDeletechirp. chirp. take it from a rather old rickety cricket: my fellow crickets are giving you a rather loud applause of rub legging. you see, they get stomped on by most creatures, esp. the two-legged kind. they understand what it feels like to be misunderstood and mistreated, and so they are rooting for you not to give up. they want you to know that no matter how much others try to quash their song, they aren't about to give up the very thing they were created to do, even if it means becoming part of a hard-rubbered heel. chirp. chirp.
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