It\u2019s 11pm on a Thursday night. I don\u2019t have work tomorrow because it\u2019s a public holiday, Hari Raya Haji. I\u2019d like to spend some time writing word vomits before I go to bed. How many word vomits can I write in a short amount of time? I believe my record for writing a vomit was about 15 minutes. How many words per minute is that? 1000 \/ 15, which is\u2026 200 \/ 3, about 70 words per minute? Gosh, that\u2019s really fast. I think that was back when I was trying to get my vomits out without thinking at all about what I was saying. It might be interesting to spend a few minutes to write that quickly. That would mean finishing this vomit by 1115pm. And it\u2019s already 1102pm. Oh dear. Well, let\u2019s just keep going and we\u2019ll see where we end up. <\/p>\n
(It\u2019s kind of cheating to be talking out loud, but is it really? And does it really matter? Actually we can elaborate on this to find something interesting. What does it mean to talk out loud when writing, and how is it different from actually writing? I suppose the distinction I\u2019m really trying to make is \u2013 is it filler, or is it not? Filler is whatever you\u2019d remove on a second pass while you\u2019re editing. The thing is, as soon as I\u2019ve said that, I know that it\u2019s not entirely accurate. It\u2019s not as simple as removing \u201cumms\u201d and \u201cahhs\u201d. Sometimes the filler thoughts provide structure, and if you try to remove them, what remains is quite incomprehensible. In which case I suppose you\u2019ll just have to restructure the whole thing \u2013 which is a lot more work than you expect when you first set out to write a first draft. But that\u2019s just how it is. You can\u2019t gripe or complain about it \u2013 that achieves nothing. You just have to rework it over and over again until it\u2019s right, or until it\u2019s good enough for you to abandon and move on.<\/p>\n
Another thing is, there are no real signals for you to follow. No external signals, anyway. You don\u2019t know in advance if anybody cares about what you\u2019re working on. When you\u2019re writing a novel in isolation, you\u2019re not going to get any of that yummy external feedback and social validation that makes it so fun to sit on twitter, for example. You have to somehow find a way to be driven from within. And why is that hard to do? It really shouldn\u2019t be. Is it true or is it not, that I am the most interesting person in my life, to me? I think it\u2019s true, at least relatively speaking. So why don\u2019t I care more about my own opinion? Why don\u2019t I care more about my own approval? Why not try to create work that I personally find amusing, compelling, interesting, gratifying?<\/p>\n
I suppose we tend to think of self-gratification as this sort of arrogant, narcissistic thing that should be stamped out. But as I\u2019ve been wanting to point out with my essay-in-progress on taste \u2013 isn\u2019t all good art rooted in self-gratification? Not a cheap, sugar-and-drugs sort of self-gratification, but a deeper, more profound self-gratification. When you gratify your deeper, fully, whole-r self. It can be done, that\u2019s what artists do. I want to say \u201cThat\u2019s what Shakespeare and Da Vinci did\u201d, although to be fair I haven\u2019t researched them enough to say that definitively. I\u2019m sure they also had broader ecosystems that they participated in. They didn\u2019t do what they did as purely intellectual exercises. They were men of the world, and they lived in the world, and they had worldly concerns. They too had to put food on their tables. They too had to find ways of earning a paycheck while simultaneously serving their art. This did not diminish their art. If anything, it probably elevated it. I think that\u2019s what Stephen Pressfield would\u2019ve argued. You have to work with the constraints that you are dealt, and when you are artful about it, your constraints are precisely what give your work the context it needs to be embedded in the world. You can\u2019t work on things in a purely abstract sense. Surely even \u201cpurely abstract art\u201d operates in a worldly context, where it says \u201cI am different from this, I am exalted, I am profound,\u201d or whatever. <\/p>\n
Anyway, it\u2019s not like I\u2019m in the business of creating abstract work. I want my work to be concrete, to be significant, to be meaningful to people. I want blood and guts and emotions. I\u2019m thinking about what one of my colleagues wrote on a status update on LinkedIn. He\u2019s experimenting with doing that whole \u201cwrite a series of sentences with some sort of emotional conflict and payoff and takeaway\u201d shtick \u2013 and to his credit, I think he\u2019s doing a pretty good job of it. So much so that I\u2019m starting to wonder if I\u2019m missing out on something. I haven\u2019t been writing word vomits for some time, and I\u2019ve been trying to figure out why that is \u2013 at least at the back of my mind. And I suppose at the heart of it is \u2013 it stopped being interesting. It stopped being exciting. It started to feel like a tedious, burdensome thing. And as I write now, 80% done with a single vomit, one out of an intended thousand, I find myself thinking that there\u2019s no way that could actually be true. It\u2019s a false sort of perception. It\u2019s like thinking that you\u2019re too tired to exercise. It\u2019s a trap. <\/p>\n
The truth is, writing gives me life. Writing shakes the dust off my bones. Writing is a conduit for me, thinking through my fingers. It\u2019s how I make sense of myself and the world around me. And as I scan the words that have passed through my fingers these past 10 minutes \u2013 and I do this almost sub-vocally rather than visually \u2013 I know that I have improved. I have gotten better at playing with the symbols we call alphabets, and arranging them into words, sentences, paragraphs. Maybe I am ready now to re-read Bird by Bird, and to get into a more rigorous study of language and its effects. I\u2019ve always known that this is what I\u2019m supposed to do with my life. I\u2019ve always known that this will be my deepest love of all. And I can feel it. I can feel it calling. When I move fast and I don\u2019t overthink things, I sense that there is a rhythm to all of this, there are colors, there is light. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s 11pm on a Thursday night. I don\u2019t have work tomorrow because it\u2019s a public holiday, Hari Raya Haji. I\u2019d like to spend some time writing word vomits before I go to bed. How many word vomits can I write in a short amount of time? I believe my record… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-10742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-word-vomit","tag-writing"],"yoast_head":"\n