i should explain

That was a strange post, wasn’t it? Come, take a walk with me. We’ll find a bench somewhere and I’ll yap your ear off.

the bench

Ooh, yeah that looks perfect. Very crispy. Do you need some water or something? You should probably drink some water. I don’t need it. I need to talk.

a brief history of my very existence (starting around 2020)

I’ve probably already talked about this in a previous post but I can’t be arsed looking back through them so I’ll explain it.

Around early 2020 I began attempting to write a novel. Not any in particular, I just set myself the goal of writing a full novel. I’d bounced between previous hobbies in my past but I would always come back to fiction writing. Getting a mental equivalent of an entire production studio to greenlight any dipshit idea I had for the cost of a little legwork? Yum yum. (note to self: cut that)

And so began a long succession of me trying to figure out how to most efficiently create a novel and walking into rakes of various sizes, shapes, and sharpened objects attached to the ends. Feel free to go to The Forest to see all the failed attempts. One thing you’ll immediately note is that the grand total of novels I’ve finished is zero. I’d start one, keep it going for a while, imagine my name in glittery lights as everyone caresses my hair and tells me what a good boy I am, and then I’d get sick of it and pack it in.

a mental sidenote

Ocurring parallel to this is my adventures with therapy. Mostly due to some social anxiety shit I started seeing a therapist. It was pretty good. Everyone should try it at least once.

That is it. Sidenote over. I had no reason to bring it up.

back to it

Woah, woah, where are you going? You wanna leave? But I haven’t finished talking. Please, come sit back on the bench. I also have a gun, if that helps convince you. Great.

I’d basically fallen on the wrong side of this

Not to say I was consciously attempting to cynically market my work to an audience before it even existed, I have too much contempt for that kind of behaviour, but I’ve noticed the ways it subtly guided my behaviour as I wrote.

Oh, that’d be a fun idea to follow. But I think it would be better to keep the story streamlined.

That’s too weird and surreal. Nobody’s gonna be able to follow along.

I really want to do some worldbuilding but if I’m going to finish a novel in a timely manner then I shouldn’t bother.

I was taking what I loved about the writing process and hacking it up to maximise efficiency. I was obsessed with finishing a novel in particular because that’s what “legitimate” writers do. I wanted eyeballs on my work, validation that what I was doing was good. And in that desperate need for attention on my work, I stopped writing what I wanted and instead compromised for this invisible mob.

Would you believe that this made writing less fun? Because it did. Almost to a harrowing degree. I don’t know when the switch happened between 2020 and now, but the seeds were already being planted back then. What started as a fun little thought experiment to see if I could publish something sprouted into a twisted, gnarled thing that skewered everything around it with jagged branches.

Writing short stories? That was so I could practice writing a novel.

Worldbuilding? That was in service of setting my novels in them. And I should only do the bare minimum necessary to finish a novel.

I swung wildly between naive optimism and pessimistic self-loathing. I knew that this was a problem, and it’s not to say I’ve had no fun during this time, but it was making me slowly lose my mind without me even noticing.

Then I replayed The Beginner’s Guide.

play the beginner’s guide

That’s not a request. If you are any type of creative, or you care at all about creativity, you will play this game. I will make you.

What the fuck are you still doing here? Play it now. It’s cheap and it’s about two hours long. It’s not like you’re doing anything valuable with your time or you wouldn’t be here. I’ll wait.

How about that reveal, huh? It was Kevin Spacey the whole time? Brilliant.

It really is the kind of game that hits me where I live whenever I replay it. It’s a story that says so much without feeling too busy. And between my millionth replay and reading this surprisingly well written essay about it, I started thinking and never stopped. I realised that my relationship to my work was becoming too dominated by the judgement I was imagining I’d get from others, and the pretend accolades I could get by optimising for efficiency and mass appeal.

Later, ranting to my partner as I often did fully nude and clutching a bottle of rum, I rattled off every tissue-thin excuse for why my brain worked like this.

“Art that isn’t shared is meaningless.”

“I need to write assuming others will read it or the quality will suffer.”

glug glug glug THUMP

And in response to that last comment, all she said was: “How do you know the quality will be worse?”

Huh. I didn’t know how to respond to that. And after I’d woken up and taken something for the hangover, I knew I had to pack it in. My 5 year journey to make a novel has resulted in 0 novels and losing parts of myself to the efficiency mill. And I’ve had enough.

what does that mean? and can I please see my wife and kids now

No.

What it “means” has already begun. I’ve ditched the current project I was working on (for now) and have entered maximum goof-off mode. Surreal short stories that don’t go anywhere? Worldbuilding that doesn’t contribute to any story in particular? This is the shit I live for. The long gaps between site updates will get even longer. But, conversely, I will have so much more fun. And, ultimately, I do this for me and me alone. You just get to read sometimes.

Thanks for your time. I appreciate these little talks we have.

BANG