Writing is killing me.
Every word is a pain.
You cannot comprehend the effort I expended in typing this sentence.
And this one.
And this.
And still. Still, I write. For whom? For you. Because I love you.
And what do you reward me with? Sheer indifference. Indifference of the purest, most unadulterated kind. Which is beautiful, in and of itself, I suppose.
5 days this has taken me.
Every. Single. Word. A toothpulledout.
I just needed to you know what it has cost me.
And why, why does writing hurt me so? Why, when the bard told us all that all talk is cheap and any bird can go cheep cheep cheep and to type this doesn’t even tax my poor vocal cords?
It’s the fact that, no matter how hard I try, no matter how hard I think, no matter how many times I edit, my sentences rot and fester and eventually turn to shit.
If Pierre Menard, Author of Quixote, had written that line, everyone would be clap-clap-clapping - including myself, naturally. But reading it back doesn’t move me. It wouldn’t move anyone. It couldn’t: it’s mine.
If Richard Brautigan had written this line, it would be a thing of beauty. Something to be enjoyed, admired, cogitated upon. Something that improved our three-score-and-ten. The exact same sentence, in the exact same place, from me is stinking garbage.
Even worse: it’s tedious. The world is a worse place for it existing. The Universe regrets creating the matter and energy required for its writing and reading. Every word I write makes a mockery of existence.
But why? Why is my writing so bad? I typed the whole of The Catcher in The Rye out and it was crummy - phony even. It was all crinkly ashes and tension headaches. It was the opposite of whatever Chicken Soup for The Soul is. I picked up a copy from the library and read the ostensibly the same thing. The exact same words in the exact same order. Then, I was spellbound, putty in Salinger’s hands.
I even erased Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 word by word and replicated each letter with my own hand. Syllable by syllable, foot by foot, it became darker and gloomier. In the end, it was not comparable to a summer day, not even a little bit.
And now, 25 days since I began, covered in sweat and yowling with pain, I am near to finishing this.
For you.
I can’t go on. I must go on. I can’t go on.