To write, is to suffer.
I remember the time where I didn’t really need to think about how to put together the sentences that had came to my mind. I would just start writing and maybe edit what I wrote 2 or 3 times before publishing it on my blog or save it in my notes. But nowadays, not only I can’t find good metaphors to use like before, I can’t stitch the sentences together to paint the whole picture of what I mean.
Dedicated to bad writing.
— Charles Bukowski, Pulp, 1994
I think not exercising those muscles for some time, and being conditioned to write less than a number of characters in twitter, and most importantly therapy has effected my creative thinking1. There’s something in raw, unaffected and unattended pain that drives you to do certain things and therapy can change that because of what you might see behind the curtain. This effect can be quite the opposite on some people as I have seen in it being resulted in more creative freedom and unclogging the flow of the words.
Interviewer: Have you been in therapy?
David Lynch: One time.
Interviewer: What happened?
David Lynch: Y'know I had a reason for going, then I asked him straight up, right up front, "Could this process that we're going to go through affect creativity?" And he said, "David, I have to be honest with you, it could." So then I had to shake his hand and...
Interviewer: Say goodbye.
David Lynch: Yeah.
— The Charlie Rose Show, 2000
These days I have some ideas pop up into my mind and I really want to put them on paper, to share with others, to publish them, but I can't weave my sentences into coherent paragraphs. I’ve tried many times to just write those sentences, one after another, and then later come back to paste them together. Most of the times I’m not happy with the result because I don’t feel the same natural flow that I used to feel and it almost seems robotic and without a soul.
I used to not believe what Bukowski stood for about “Bad writing” and seeing writing as a craft and not an art, but I guess if I want to get back to it, I have to follow the old man’s words.
This post is kind of a warm-up for me to pick up writing after so long and to publish it in Waldi which my friend has built it. Before Waldi, I had this excuse of not having a good platform to write and publish my thoughts.
- I used to be able to draw as well, but now I struggle with trying to form a line the way I want it to be. ↩