Letter to myself as someone who wants to write

Dear myself,

So I hear that you have chosen to want to write for a living. I thoroughly disapprove of this decision, as does your mother, but it seems as though you cannot be dissuaded.

Fuck you.

Anyway, given your weak character and narrow worldview and general lack of wisdom or intellect or even knowledge, I can only hope that you will do enough reading and thinking to make up for it little by little. I am desperately worried about you, as is your mother, because wanting to write for a living requires a lot of self-assuredness and genius, neither of which I am convinced you have.

To be frank, I think you are a complete idiot to be doing this.

But you are me and I care about you who is me, whether you are a total halfwit or not. So I would more than anything like to see you survive your stupid decision, if only to avoid painful embarrassment. I would like to see you earn the dollar that can feed you and clothe you and free you from being hopelessly depended on your poor parents, who really shouldn’t be feeding you and clothing you in your twenties.

It is for these reasons that I want to remind you of some things, which I hope you will read and consider whenever crappy things happen to you as a result of this decision.

Remember:

You are vain and selfish to want to write. You are vain because you think your stories are worth telling and you can be a storyteller who gets paid for her stories. You are selfish because you should be making an effort to be a contributing member of the society, but instead you are choosing to do whatever the hell you want.

You should be ashamed of yourself for these reasons – but you chose to want it and to want it openly, and you may never whine about it. You’re not allowed to be a baby anymore. Be responsible for your choices.

Remember:

You are not writing a diary entry. You are writing for and on behalf of and at the cost of and because of everybody. Therefore, you may never write about yourself. Do not expect to earn a dime telling a story about you. If you do, you are a hack and a thief.

Remember:

What Hemingway said: “It’s none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.” This is probably a moot point, because everybody already knows that you have to learn how to write, but don’t ever talk about the process.

Or, a simpler rule: Don’t talk about writing at all.

Remember:

What Kafka said: “I need solitude for my writing; not like a hermit – that wouldn’t be enough – but like a dead man.” Kafka is exaggerating, but the truth of it remains: You are doing this.  You are in it by yourself, so don’t expect somebody else to push you through it or pull you out of an unproductive day. They’ve got bigger things to fry, such as real life.

Your life is not a real life until you sell something. Even then, I’m not sure if it’ll become real. This too is a part of the choice you made, so don’t moan.

Remember:

A child could potentially do this better than you. Don’t complain about that either. When you are feeling down about the crap you’ve come up with, be consoled in the fact that you aren’t letting your crap bewitch you into thinking that it is better than it is.

Advertisement