shit

I guess it was inevitable. Its not that I don't like people, it really isn't, but I hit the same wall again and again: it really is all about that pesky writing. It really is all about picking up the goddamed pen and dragging it, kicking and screaming, across the page. And if it kicked and screamed from time to time, that would be okay, but I am in the doldrums. Fuck Stephen King and 300 pages a day. He's nuts. And rich. Rich from writing, which, it was pointed out to me on the first day of writing 101: if you're here for the money, go home. It was instead very Rilkean: write only if you must. Only if you will die of it otherwise. And there you have it. My curse.

Once again, I have joined something, and once in, I can't find the way out. I will likely go again -- the writer's group I have been blathering on about -- but I won't want to, and it is not what I was looking for. What I was and now again AM looking for does not exist in any real form. What I seek is the perfect balance of talent and competition, the perfect blend of compassion and brutality. Not. They were all newbies, uninitiated, wannnabees, and perfectly nice people, but they are not of my ilk. This is not a statement of unadulterated hubris-- it is a fact. One is a mild mannered fantasy writer, taking her first class in fiction writing; one is a soccer mom who wants to write children's stories for her child and stories from her own childhood for her parents for christmas; one is a man who says he has no experience and yet quotes major writers with ease and seems to want to talk about writing more than he wants to write.

And these are fine things, fine people, but they are not me. And I hate that. And, I am glad to be me. These people, they embrace the JOY of writing. What is that? Joy? I have joy. I have it here somewhere, I know I do. But in relation to the written word? Not so much. I am looking for suffering souls, near committment, who will write, who do, in fact, write, and who write well. These guys embrace education, which, if you've been listening you will know fucked up my writing bigtime.

I'm bitter. I am alone in a city.