Is It Possible That Writing is Keeping Me From Writing?
It’s a perplexing question
Let me start by saying I fully understand the weirdness of the title of this piece; it falls into that category of classic questions like “do you walk to school or carry your lunch?” and “what’s the difference between a duck?” I just can’t think of one that sums up my current conundrum any better, so I’m going with it, even with a woefully weak headline score of 64.
Here’s what I mean when I ask if writing is actually keeping me from writing: is writing here (and on other sites like this) in some way sabotaging my fiction writing? Like a majority of people here, I started out on Medium fully intending to use it as a platform for my short stories and novel excerpts, and to varying degrees over the past two years I have done that.
But as we all also know, fiction gets about as many views as a story about what Joe Biden eats for breakfast, and probably far fewer. We learn fairly quickly that stories about Meatloaf’s most famous song, your favorite John Wayne films, and sex in the Victorian Age garner vastly higher numbers of views than that short story about teen love gone horribly wrong (I used those three topics because they just happen to be my most-viewed stories ever). Fiction is, and always will be, a redheaded stepchild here.
Don’t get me wrong; I love that those three stories have received tens of thousands of views, even if the vast majority of those views were from non-members. But as I have written countless stories (well, not countless; more like just over 800) hoping to eke out a living writing full time, I have to wonder if I’m using up ideas on these stories that would otherwise be adapted into my fiction. After all, as novelists and short story writers we use everything. Hank Moody summed it up best on the TV series Californication:
“I am not going to a fucking shrink! I’m a writer! I don’t give that shit away.”
Am I (and are we) giving that shit away when we use it on what are essentially blog posts, hoping for pennies in return? Will we be remembered for these blog posts? Did any of you remember the three stories I mentioned above (if you ever even saw them in the first place)?
Yes, no, and probably not.
None of these questions even venture into more practical issues like the decline in reads/views/earnings that has caused some amazing writers to either significantly reduce what they write here or leave the site completely. That’s a rant for another day.
This is about more than money or views or anything like that. This is about focusing our time and energy on producing work that will give us what we all really crave: immortality. As a semi-lapsed/semi-practicing Catholic, I believe in the Creed, but that’s about immortality there; I’m talking about immortality here.
I someday want someone to write ridiculous numbers of articles about me the same way I write about Bruce now. I want critics to debate how much of a jackass I really was, just like they do with Hemingway. And I want to reach that pinnacle of literary fame: being talked about and fawned over while never being read by future generations, just like Dickens.
For any of this to happen, I might need to start writing fewer nonfiction pieces and using those ideas for fiction. The things I’ve written about my recent time in East Texas could easily have been converted into a “man moves to small town and finds love with a feisty librarian/rancher” novella. That never actually happens in real life, but National Book Award voters love that nonsense, even more so if it can be turned into a Hallmark Channel movie.
Looking back over this, I can’t decide if it’s a rant, a ramble, or just a whine. If I was going to act on what I’ve just written, I should probably have found a way to drop this into the dialogue of one of my characters. Apparently, my fictional characters bitch far less than I do. Go figure.
Keep writing, my friends, and may Hemingway be with you.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this story, you can support my writing directly by joining Medium here. You’ll get access to all of my articles (including my weekly rants and numerous Springsteen stories) as well as those of all the other great writers here.