Hookeyes

It’s a story about hookeyes, but that’s not really what this story’s about. If anything, what this story is about is me. I’m the protagonist here, and I’m the most important person to have this curse. The curse is having to do this. This, right now. I didn’t think that I was all that, and it turns out this was a completely accurate assessment of the situation. I don’t even know if this is the end of the paragraph or if the next thing is going to be it. I’m so tired right now, it’s unreal. I’m sure some angel will materialise on my shoulder and say something like: “Don’t worry about the inanity of what you’re saying, the ideas will spring forth. The only thing you have to worry about is just keeping the flow going.” And whilst I appreciate it for giving me this input, I’m still at a loss here. A loss of ideas, a loss of motivation, a loss of the reason I embarked on this journey in the first place. Whoops, paused on the word “Journey,” Probably because of what my parents unconsciously taught me about not using “Journey” to not refer to a literal journey.

I’m just now realising how damaging that is. But the ideas thing is interesting. Way back in like 2020 when I decided that I wanted to have a properly finished novel or something or other, I’m starting to think more and more that that promise was more of a millstone around my neck than any kind of productive thing to do. What if I’m just interested in writing for the sake of writing and not telling anybody about it. My gut instinct is to resist that but I think that’s because of my need, maybe need I’m not sure, for validation of my writing. To be the special boy. To be the person that people look up to and to impress everyone with my amazing writing. But maybe I just want to write. Stuff I learn and enjoy learning about writing I think may just be me feeding into that. What if I’m just done with quality? Maybe I want to be done with quality. I want to just write for the sake of writing. Of telling stories. I want to maybe make a promise to rival the promise I made in 2020 to finish a novel length project. So here’s my promise, and I’m going to make it bold and italicised so you know for sure that I really really mean it:

I DON’T WANT TO EVER WRITE FOR OTHERS AGAIN

That seems like a really bad, spur of the moment kind of decision, but it also feels like something very freeing. I want to write and just do it for fun and for myself. I’ll improve my craft, not through the kinda futile way I am picking up advice from everyone, I mean just look at critics, they are insanely knowledgeable about the formats they review but they wouldn’t be able to make anything for shit, usually. I want to improve my craft through doing, and especially through fiction writing which I’ve kind of gone off of for now, as you can tell by my rambling, non-fiction diatribe here. But I think the MO here is clear, I am going to stop worrying about how good what I make is and if ideas are practically feasable and if I should be able to finish things, I just want to do. Even when I was a chillin’, I was constantly thinking about whether I would finish things like comic books and planning potentially massive stories but worrying constantly about whether I would finish them. I want to chase that feeling, which I literally just had and lost again, of when I was playing with my toys as a kid and I would just play with them and write the stories down with little thought or effort. It was incredibly personal and I knew it wasn’t any of the “legitimate” means of storytelling, but why not!? Why not just write for the sake of it and have fun with it the same way I played with my toys. I just want to have fun, and all of these restrictions I’m placing on myself are just getting in the way.

So I guess that’s the plan now, I’m going to write without any semblance of caring for quality, I’m just going to do it for myself. And I don’t mean quality as in the actual how good my stories are and how pleased with them I feel, but the arbitrary, imposed quality that I have drilled into myself because I thought I had to get ready for primetime.

I’ve also gone waaaay over my initial 5 minutes, given myself another 5 minutes, and am going even further beyond that. My wrists hurt but I’m on a roll and this is important to me so why not. I worry that these stories are going to be all autobiographical but fuck it, if that’s what I want then that’s what I want. And that’s the only audience member I care about anymore. Or at least want to care about. The next thing I write I’m just going to…write. And I think that’s about where I’m going to leave things. I’m going to write stories, am I going to plan? I dunno. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I’ll start writing just for the sake of it and generate dot point plots as I go. Maybe I’ll use that episodic format but that, I’ve found, is starting to ease into that familiar, I think destructive, pattern of trying to make it a work that I’ll show to others. I want to say that I’ll never show anyone anything that I do ever again, but that’s obviously a big commitment and, who knows, maybe I’ll learn how to sort all of this stuff out. But for right now, no time limits, no demands to finish things, no chaining myself to any long-term projects I don’t want to do for that long. Just work on stories that are interesting, and ONLY ones that are interesting. Ignore any impulses to head towards publishing, please.