On Writing

So this is not going to be a review.

There is a book by the given title (a short guidebook for the aspiring writer by Stephen King: GET IT NOW) but it does not merit a review, if only for the sole reason that I can find no flaws in it. It is short, awesome, hard-hitting, and helpful without being overbearing. Of special note is King's deadpan humour, which gets...

...But I digress.

This short little ditty is about the act of writing itself.

It is currently 3:25AM in the morning. I do not exactly have a healthy sleep pattern, but I generally call it a day at 2 or 3 by the latest (by calling it a day I mean crawling into bed to play Angry Birds or read some short stories on Kindle, but screw it).

Tonight, however, I feel pumped. I feel alive. I feel like the king of all I survey.

And that's simply because of writing.

You see, I started this short story last week. It was meant to be around 5,000 words; two nights worth of effort, three at the most. I worked on it for three days, wrote all the offbeat humour and random violence, and then... Stopped. Somewhere near the 4,000 word mark.

Because I now had to write about normal human interaction; something I do not happen to be very good at. I left the story alone for the next two nights (wrote a poem one day and watched Up the next-awesome flick!) and was going to work on the next one tonight before I thought

I'll be damned if I give up on the one thing I really honestly want to be good at.

Mr King has no illusions of grandeur about the actual act of writing: in his book he speaks of writers using their creativity as an excuse for their other flaws (melancholia and alcoholism amongst them) and also of muses that shit on the writer's head (long story).

One thing he stresses upon, however, is not to give up. He says stories will mostly be fun to write, but that one must not get discouraged at the tough parts, either. Because writing isn't always gonna be a bed of roses.

I stuck by my story (it was mine, after all: who else would stick by it?) and have worked on it for four hours before coming here to pour my incoherent heart out.

At the time of writing, The Last Laugh finally lies in a state of completion: not polished, yet (that shall come later) but in working condition. Readable from start to end. My baby's 6,500 words long (I was never good with estimates) and went for 18 pages of hoots when I read her over again (dunno if everyone else will like it, though).

I might not make it big for a long time to come - heck, for the rest of my life if I'm really unlucky. But right now I honestly think I wouldn't mind. Because as long as fiction, or poetry, or rambling prose (like this one) gives me as much of a kick as it did tonight, it will always be the one drug I'll need to feel truly alive.

Would rant a bit more but I need to mail her off for dad to take a print. Tomorrow I shall edit her a bit, try to keep her soul and trim off a bit of flab, and then maybe I'll post a short excerpt here for your perusal.

Thank you for reading this far. Dunno where a writer would be without his reader(s), but I'm willing to bet it would not be too happy a place.

Peace.