One Year Minus Nine Days

Posted on June 13, 2003 in Blogging Book of Days

Note: This is part of a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.

Today’s topic: These were the doubts I had.

A year ago, minus nine days, I started writing this blog. I was a writer known slightly for my work on City of the Silent and a couple of articles in obscure religious periodicals. I’d been on the Discovery Channel for my research into Alcatraz in the 1930s and 1940s, but I wasn’t what I’d call famous, except in a few narrow ellipses.

My doubts were these:

1. Could I keep it up every day? I worried if I had enough energy, given my tendency towards depression and my diabetes. I have met this challenge.
   
2. Could I say new things? I’d measured the well to a certain depth and I assumed that it was as far as I could reach. Since then, I’ve considered changing metaphors because the whole idea of a mind that could be plumbed seemed irrelevant. Today, I find it worth revisiting old thoughts and seeing what new things I can learn from them.
   
3. Could I be creative? I saw my ability to describe as limited, my metaphors and descriptive powers to be trite. I’ve given myself permission to write garbage in the interest of unearthing the occasional raw gemstone.
   
4. Would people read me? I’m not sure that they do now, but I’m not writing this to become rich or to get laid by admiring groupies. I write for the writing, to let Truth come out.
   
5. Would people hate me? I can’t help it if they do. I can’t help if they get jealous or write nasty parodies of me. I accept two things, now: first, people will choose to dislike me, often over and above my ability to please them, and; second, I don’t have to listen to truly stupid, mean people. Hence the words wearing the gray shroud when you bring up the comments for an article.

All these are half-answers. As I’ve blogged, I have tried new things, allowed imperfections to corrode my chrome finish which annoys those who want perfection. Tupperware comes off the line without blemishes, all looking alike. When you write as I do, you get balls of raw wax, misshapen boxes, and, now and then, the stuff of weird science — things that crawl. I am at ease with this. I like crooked things.

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Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: Write about a dinner party.