Whining Again

The problem with artful writing is that it requires a certain looseness of mood, one which I simply do not attain on most days I sit down to write. This is directly a product of anxiety, namely the tension across the chest I experience at the thought of sitting down to put words on the page that will eventually be read by other people. I have come to hate this feeling so much that I have in fact come to hate writing, even though I do it reasonably well.

The problem with giving up addictions is that it requires an unshakable conviction, which, if you’d had it to begin with, would have prevented you from becoming addicted in the first place. I’m turning away from the concept of addiction these days, because although probably accurate, it doesn’t particularly help with ghancing anything. I chose to throw my diet aspirations out the window this weekend because I was feeling shaky after so much social engagment. I knew that I shouldn’t have done it, but I did it anyway. And once it was done, the loop had begun, and there is no way out of it without some serious white-knuckling.

Robert Rankin writes with paper and biro, and as much as I love the idea, I can’t believe that he didn’t have a secretary or someone at his publisher who typed it all up for him. But I also have an aversion to repetitive and mindless tasks, ie. anything that feels like work, and typing up stories is definitely mindless and boring.

Story

He went to the store to buy a pack of cigarettes. The shopkeeper refused to sell it him because he was drunk. This made no sense, and so he said so. The shopkeeper did not relent, and so he was forced to leave and go to another shop. Going to another shop, the shopkeeper noticed that he was drunk, but didn’t seem to mind particularly and sold him the cigarettes.

Packet in hand, he went out side and lit one. Inhaling a lungful of acrid smoke tasting of burnt plastic, he realised that he had lit the wrong end, and beled the charred and melted filter up before himself. He contemplated throwing the cigarette away, but feeling that this was too great a waste, he broke the filter off and lit the torn and frayed end that remained.

Passing a bus stop a teenage girl looked up form her phone and asked him for a cigarette.

How old are you? He asked.

None of your business. She replied.

Well, it would be unethical of me to give a cigarette to someone who looks like a minor without knowing her age. So I don’t think I will.

Her eyes dropped back to her phone. Man, fuck you, she said.

He wasn’t happy about being spoken to this way, but felt also that any further discussion wouldn’t be worth the effort and so he continued on his way.

Coming to the corner he stopped at the red light, but seeing that there was no traffic, crossed anyway. The man who had been standing and dutifully waiting, seeing this example followed suit and stepped out into the road. At this moment a car came ripping around the corner and nearly hit the man, who stopped and shouted after the incautious driver.

Noticing

I seem to have lost all intuition for plotting and story. Nothing ever happens in the stories I write these days, at least nothing that really seems to be a thing. I don’t know how and when this happened, but to me its cause seems to be the fact that I don’t watch movies anymore and rarely leave the house. Nothing happens in my life and most of the “narrative” I take in is quasi-documentary powerpoint presentations on youtube. Mostly I think it’s because I have removed all interpersonal interactions from my life, at least anything that has any real emotions attached to it. There is no conflict in my existence aside from all of the fighting monkeys stuff you see in the news.

Cliche

I don’t understand how series writers can be cool with “world creation” that is literally just picking a trope and changing the character’s names. That said, I also don’t understand plot or plotting in general and I usually don’t notice it in the books that I read. It’s usually pretty obvious in TV shows and movies, but even then, I rarely watch for it.

Plot

A man with 14 fingers is found with his face stomped in in a brothel. No security cameras and he signed in with a fake name, paid in hard credits.

Idea

One of my problems is that everything I write feels hyperbolic and disingenuously cynical. Brothel. Where the fuck is there a brothel in Peterborough, Ontario. Maybe there is one, but I don’t know where it is, I don’t know how to find it, I don’t know anyone who would know either. My only encounters with borthels are fictional. I mean, there was a red light district in Hannover, but I only ever walked past it once and it held no appeal for me. But here in north america, they don’t exist except in some seriously underground way that I have no personal access to.

Positivistic Fiction

This is a bad thing that has happened for me: I have lost my ability to take fantasy seriously. My view of life and reality is now dull and concrete. There is no mystery or mysticism, and it is all based around did it or didn’t it happen. If it isn’t currently possible, I don’t believe it could be. I have also come to feel that future speculation is futile and in many ways detrimental to humanity because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that some rich dickwad tries to make real. It also seems in bad taste to write escapist dystopian fictions in a world that is increasingly becoming one.

All deadlines are arbitrary and moveable, and there are no villains in day to day life. Neither god nor satan exist and the technological developments we have made have all been anticlimactic. The future is here and it sucks.

My Day

I woke up and faffed about for an hour until talking with A. Felt very narcissistic talking about myself for an hour and begged off the call because I wanted to go and do something else. Tried a first experiment with cacao as an alternative to caffeine, because, to be honest, I miss getting high. Without a drug of some kind, I have no motivation to do anything because my innate anxiety dampens all impulses down into grumpy cynicism which can and does only lead to junk food and youtube bingeing.

Which I did today. An entire 1kg frozen lasagne, a bag of doritos and a box of cookies. Fucking 6000 calories in one sitting, and no, I did not do an extra 1500 calories of exercise to balance it out. That was 5 hours ago and I still feel disgusting. The problem, or part of it anyway, that I’m realising now is that cooking feels liek a waste of time for me, like a big old dick in anus waste of time. Part of me refuses to engage with the sysiphean aspects of life, the repetitive boringness of keeping myself alive. Avoiding the effort of that is the primary appeal of frozen and packaged shit.

It is a point that I used to notice all the time, but which has become so commonplace for me that I no longer notice it: doing things feels like wasting time but wasting time doesn’t. Sitting for 5 hours and watching youtube bullshit feels like doing things but actually making/doing things doesn’t. That is utterly insane and I don’t know what to do about it.

The problem is that there are literally no consequences to my not finishing something. There are no deadlines, no production quotas, no particular need to do anything except bring in a minimum of revenue from my therapy business. I no longer suffer from number-go-up syndrome and I can’t trick myself back into it. Well, I can, but it lasts maybe a day, until I get a case of the fuckits and just don’t bother with whatever the thing is. Because it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t, at all. Nothing does. The only difference my killing myself would make is that my parents and couple of friends would be sad for a while. Then they will die too in a blink of a cosmic eye and the universe will roll on, exactly as it would have rolled on if I became a bestseller and a millionaire.

I hate this aspect of myself, but it is incredibly difficult to resist because it is the perfect rationalisation of stasis, of not putting effort in, and not courting failure. To court success is to court failure, but more importantly it is to court those little disconfirming interactions with people, whereby you form some sort of small attachment, and then the attachment fades because the project ends or it just drifts away and everyone forgets about it. I am achingly tired of these endless little breakups. I fulfilled my quota of these by the time I was 25 and I just can’t take any more disappointment, no matter how small.

Tomorrow

My plan for tomorrow is as follows:

  1. work on the Orson novel

  2. buy groceries

  3. go to the gym

I think I will do this according to the following schedule:

Anything else is bonus prizes. I also really need to clean my bathtub.

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