atramentousdiscovery-blog - Tumblr blog

[atramentousdiscovery-blog]

sometimes you just write with abandon and in secret.  for no one's eyes but your own.  then it can be absolutely shitty and terrible.  fertilizer for better things.

[atramentousdiscovery-blog]

A writer is basically a midwife.  Two, or if you're kinky more, ideas have mixed themselves together and it's your job to make it work.  The stillborns are always tragedies.

[atramentousdiscovery-blog]

P-51 (1st go)

From the piers of Shanghai to the harbors of Hong Kong,

my grandfather carried this green and gold Parker 51.

Each day, businessmen would carry his signature to the bank,

his name a promise their ships were sailing in.    

Later, my father would take the 51 to write my mother

letters of love, news, and apology.  She’d receive

their promise in a crowded apartment on 7th and I.  

From Hong Kong to Washington D.C.

I hold it now and feel the balance, the weight.

The ink vacuum had worn and the gold has turned bronze.

But a man at Fahrney’s fixed my family’s 51.  And I am

left with promise.

[atramentousdiscovery-blog]

Confidence

     Writing is an egotistical exercise because it has to be.  If you insist on being a writer, then somewhere inside you also insist that you have something to say.  And worse, that something is worth saying.  If you doubt, you cease to be a writer.  And words simply become therapy for the crushing loneliness of human existence.

     You cannot be a writer without confidence because to be a writer without confidence is to be a writer without a voice.  Voice is, really, the only thing a writer can bring to writing. There are no new plots to be conceived.  And unless you're Shakespeare or Carroll you probably can't make new words.  (Or, you can but no one's going to accept them unless you're the next Shakespeare or Carroll.)  But just maybe you can find a new way to say a certain old thing.

     I am wary of unique or authentic voices.  I don't know what those words are supposed to signify.  Just have your voice.  And then watch your voice change.  Or maybe not.  It doesn't matter, so long as you have one.

     Somewhere along the way, I lost my confidence.  But it can be regained.  The failure of performing poorly is better than the failure to perform at all.  It does not always feel that way.  Giving up feels good.  Giving up stops the bleeding, stops the pain.  But it also kills you.  Poor performance always leaves you with the possibility, limitless possibility of improvement.

     Let's start.  Let us go on an atramentous journey.  (This is the only time I'll use that word, promise.)