I keep journals. Long ones.
I hardly read them.
Okay, better explain this...
There is a type of writing I do--a type of writing I've done for almost 25 years, in fact--that I playfully call "comfort food writing."
This is a euphemism for "writing that accomplishes little, if anything, but fills a part of my day."
I often do this writing in the morning, when I'm drinking my coffee and can't think of anything to write. Often, it will go something like this:
Can't think of anything to write, can't think of anything to write, can't think of anything to write. Stuff on the counter includes the new issue of Wired, a microfiber cloth for cleaning fingerprints off of my iPad, a 3.5mm audio jack for said iPad, something from National Grid concerning meter readings in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, and a Christmas card for the previous owners of the house, who clearly didn't tell everyone that they've moved.
And then I'll move on to the self-indulgent stuff. I love the self-indulgent stuff:
Still writing. Why do I just write this self-indulgent stuff that will never see the light of day? Why, for 25 years, have I gotten up and written what, at times, has been upwards of 2000 words that have no practical use whatsoever?
Then I'll probably start talking about my past. I so enjoy doing that:
Why, in college, did I not take up the ukulele? Now I know how to play an instrument in which I can actually write down ideas for chord progressions, which means that, had I known how to do this back then, I would have been able to collaborate with all those folks in the dorm who played instruments. True, I played drums, but that's not exactly an instrument that you can play on your own to get song ideas.
And don't even get me started on karate. Boy, could I have used that in eighth grade. I would have beaten the people who bullied me to a bloody pulp. Those would have been good times.
...then, of course, I come to the wallowing self pity. Love it. Love it, love it, love it.
Why am I just sitting here, drinking coffee, doing nothing? I could be practicing karate. I could be composing songs. I could be writing novels. Why, in God's name, am I not doing this? I have friends who seem to do so much with their day, so much with their lives.
And these people seem so capable of getting things done. They're posting to their blogs. They're working on their websites. They're composing songs.
I could be doing this. If I actually had started doing things years ago, I would be...
Stop. That's enough. I think you get the idea.
Self indulgent writing--my term for the writing in which you write it for no one but yourself--is, as I said before, the comfort food of writing.
Yes, there's a place for it. For the first fifteen minutes of the morning, there's something to be said for just letting go in a free write. Peter Elbow recommends this in Writing With Power, another writing advice book in which I read the first 15 or so pages and then gave up.
(There are many, many books in which I've read the first 15 pages and given up. You have no idea.)
Anyway, yes, there is a place for that kind of writing. Ray Bradbury also talks about a second cousin of this type of writing in the introduction to his massive story collection. In Bradbury's case, it's all about making stream of consciousness lists, such as:
The moment in time. This moment in time. A second. One fraction of a second. The Big Bang. The first instant of The Big Bang. Slicing that first instant into ever smaller pieces, paper thin, molecule thin, element-splitting thin, electron-spinning thin, quark-spinning thin.
Thin enough to split a quark. I like that. I like that part.
Janet Jackson saying "I like that part" from the song "Nasty Boys," which my friend Naomi played in her Toyota Supra endlessly during 1986, when Ashe battled zombies in "The Evil Dead," and asked who's laughing now as he cut off his arm with a chainsaw. Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics saying that theres's nothing more beautiful than a revved up chainsaw.
And so on.
And so it goes.
Linda Ellerbie signing off at the end of NBC's evening show "Overnight," when she would say "and so it goes, and so we go." This before the age of infomercials, when you actually had to put something of substance on the air between 12 and 6 in the morning, although most stations signed off well before six with the national anthem.
The national anthem, and then snow on the TV. Think about it: most people growing up in this day and age have never seen video snow; just a blue screen and a message on the set that says something like "signal not located."
But we don't have a signal. No frequency. What's the Frequency, Kenneth? An assault on Dan Rather, and an REM song.
Billy Bob Thornton on Real Time With Bill Maher talking about 60s music, and saying "alright, I'll give you U2 and REM...what else came out of the 80s?"
Forgetting, apparently, The Pixies, The Replacements, Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, Big Daddy Kane, NWA, Fishbone, They Might Be Giants, Husker Du, The Dead Milkmen, Miracle Legion, Black Flag, The Suicidal Tendencies, The Stray Cats, Fugazi, Minor Threat, The Silos, The Feelies, X, Billy Bragg (who yes, started performing in 1977, but who really didn't rise to prominence until the 80s), The Smithereens, The Raybeats (okay, formed in 1979, but their first record didn't come out till 1981), Jane's Addiction, Tracy Chapman, The Indigo Girls, The Cowboy Junkies, Throwing Muses, and a host of others I've forgotten about, but which someone far more knowledgable about music could add to.
But enough about useful writing like that, the kind of writing that could actually inspire something of worth.
No, I'm talking about writing that really doesn't accomplish any purpose whatsoever except to justify sitting in the same place, drinking coffee, and doing nothing of any consequence. Yeah. That's the kind of writing that I'm talking about.
Writing such as:
Okay. Here's what I'm going to do. Today I'm actually going to write some fiction. I'm going to practice my uke and write a song, or at least get started on one. I'm going to practice karate.
Above all, I'm going to get up and stop writing this self-indulgent crap and stop drinking so much damn coffee.
But here I go again, making plans on which I will never follow through.
Friends of mine follow through on their plans. They do things. They make things. They are the correct weight. I hate these people.
And, once again, I'm off.
Sometimes I think that I will simply spend the rest of my days writing things that will never see the light of day.
I will be haunted by this till the end of my existence.
