Obsession

Have you ever had an obsession? If you have you know how it feels, if you haven’t, well, consider yourself lucky. It’s like being trapped in a continuous loop and no matter what you try to do to escape it you simply can’t, not until you’ve done what ever it is you brain is demanding you do. My obsession arises when I need to write, but I can’t think of what I want to write. Actually it’s the need to express an idea, and I can’t seem to write it down. I call it writing in my head. This constant swirl of thought and idea, where the thought becomes a story and the idea becomes something I cooked. It’s like a Ground Hog’s Day-Twilight Zone Mash-up. I keep repeating the same general thought in my head, “You need to write.” But each verse is sicker, more cracked than the last, and the hook is all crunk music. Sometimes it’s loud and I’m feeling it, more often it’s like that Ipod on the bus when you are trying to read, pulsing, always a touch too fucking loud.

If I’m going to write, I want to be a great writer. I want to wax eloquent, be wise, witty, and drone on in a honey sweet baritone when I read my work aloud, like that syrupy Anthony Bourdain. I want to have a column, or a blog that everybody reads; not because it’s a popular topic in a fashionable and digestible package, but because I actually have something worth reading. I often find myself digging down into my most private places, trying to find the courage to say what I really think. I find it, but I wonder why I had to dig for it. I have one follower on my blog, and she sleeps with me. She reads it when I write it and she gives me feed back I can use. I have to give my obsession an expression I can use. And I have in a number of ways. But there is always a lingering doubt when so long goes by and not a dime for your efforts, rarely an offer but more often a rejection. I delete rejection emails. HOW DARE you reject me? You pompous ass! But I never forget, I never neglect what is said about why I lost. It’s making me a better writer, but I don’t want to open the junk drawer and look at a bunch of fucking yellow slips. Down that road lays alcoholism my friends.

Let’s examine for a moment. I have all the prerequisite skills of a great writer:

· I can write.[1]
· I love beer.[2]
· I’ve been a womanizer.
· My temper sometimes gets the better of me.
· I can be cloistered and gregarious, and pompous.

I want to be clear; I am speaking of GREAT writers. I am talking about people who have written the works that have withstood the test of time, the temper of ignorance and the church. Not because I believe that every thing people write is worth saving, but because I want people saying my name a thousand years from now. Some Stephen King level exposure and money would be great in the interim, so I write on, spilling my inky seed onto bright white sheets. For future remembrance of me, I spread the word amongst you; I write because I’m good at it and getting better all the time, but I also write so that you may hear and believe, there is more than one valid way to live, to love to fuck.

Writing isn’t my obsession it’s a tool for my obsession; and it’s the one I use best. So, never think that you’ve heard the last of me, for my obsession drives me, and though my tires squeal and blow out, I will always rejoin the race.
[1] I know what some of you are thinking, “Hell, I can write.” But it is NOT the same.
[2] I mean come on…when you can’t get pot…?