On The Discipline of Good Writing
I learn from everyone—even the writers who've taken it upon themselves to douse their writing with em dashes as a way to tiny spit in the singularity's eye. This, then, is a journal entry beginning with that same stubborn, deliberate stutter, a moment of resistance against the smooth, predictive surfaces of the machine.
Another day, another scattering of words across—the sheer, exhausting volume of it. Yet there remains that small, sharp pleasure, a clean, sudden sting of recognition, when someone can actually write. A good damn piece of literature, yes. Not the grand, posturing kind, but the quiet, honed variety. I find I am far more sparing with an expletive on the page than I am in the slipstream of conversation; the written word demands a more precise economy, a more disciplined violence. Good writers are so hard to find when you're looking for people who are more than just the ink on the paper, more than the product. Fuck J.K. Rowling.
I read, of course. I always do. But I follow only four or five. Their blogs, these small, private tributaries that run against the main current. It's not the content so much as the clean, cold clarity of the structure—the way they choose to lay the evidence. I remember once, a specific urgency, the peculiar audacity of asking someone to simply write more. An anticipation that sits like a low, dull ache, waiting for the sporadic, self-determined trickle of a new post. It isn't a demand, it's a profound, almost desperate faith in their particular arrangement of syntax.
We are not lacking for artists, for thinkers, despite the incessant noise and the endless production of "think piece" books that serve only to document the obvious. The evidence is not in the bookstore. It's in the saved tabs, a digital archive I have accrued since February, a private, personal museum of art itself. The art, I mean, without the stillness, without the mausoleum quality of print. It’s the movement of the mind captured, the immediate and ongoing articulation. I have never blocked anyone on anything. There's no point. We shouldn't play pretend with powers of God—of digital omnipotence—when they haven't existed prior to the online creation of the button. The noise is simply the atmosphere.
And the offerings. The small, careful, sometimes clumsy pieces of myself I have left with them. Did they read it back? Did it register, or was it merely dismissed, thrown away like a misplaced receipt?
I keep everything. That is the point, isn't it? The obligation of memory, the inability to let go. Not just the notebooks, the clippings, the marginalia, but the scent—the heavy, specific ghost of cologne on a sweater returned. A gift lives forever. It sits on the periphery, a constant, tangible presence. And the writing will too. It’s the closest we come to leaving a permanent artifact, a clean, sharp statement that, for one brief, clear moment, was true. The rest is just weather.