On Guarantees Or The Lack Thereof

You are guaranteed very, very little, bordering on nothing at all, in this world. There are guarantees of certain, axiomatic truths. Tautologies. So, nothing worth a shit.

You’re not guaranteed the sun will rise tomorrow, and you’re certainly not guaranteed that you will rise tomorrow. You’re not guaranteed peace, happiness, unhappiness, war, pestilence, or the winning lottery numbers. You’re not guaranteed that you’ll be able to finish a list of guarantees.

And you’re damn sure not guaranteed that the next thing you write will be any good.

How would you go about guaranteeing such a thing, just logically? You’re gonna know your next thoughts are gonna be good before you think them? Be fuckin’ for real. And just as there’s no idea too bad that it can’t be saved through amazing execution, there’s no idea so powerful, so moving and transcendental, that it couldn’t be sabotaged by the brain farts.

So, realistically, this shouldn’t be on your mind. Why waste cycles on an impossibility? You won’t know how a creative work goes until you do it any more than you won’t be positive your car will start the next time you try to go get a burrito.

Take the cap off the pen. Take the metaphorical computer cap off the computer pen. It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about what you’re going to write and fucking go. Write something people aren’t supposed to see, and put “if you’re reading this fuck you, I don’t like you” somewhere in there to let them know. Just go. Go in with no plans, go in with no thoughts and see what happens. You have my permission for it to be bad. You should extend yourself the same courtesy.

Just go. Write about your day, or the chair your sitting in, that it’s best days might be past it and you’re acutely aware that you have a lumbar. Use the wrong ‘your’ and the wrong “it’s”. It doesn’t matter at all. Write that song lyric that’s stuck in your head, and see where it goes from there. Write about your dog or some dog you saw one time. Edit nothing, censor nothing. Revision is boring and sterile, and you are neither. The first thing you wanna say is what’s right.

I fucking love Writing Down The Bones.

In the same way that I am supposed to give myself space and time to lament the loss of normalcy to bipolar disorder, I’ll choose to give myself this space to lament the lost opportunities of writing about any number of simple, beautiful moments that have come and gone, synapses and electricity painting a picture I’ve already forgotten. Writing is synesthesia. A fragrance can engage nostalgia, paint visuals, stir memories. Writing can engage nostalgia for a place you’ve never been. How lucky are we that we can do this?

I’ve been censoring myself, editing myself, pulling myself up short for several years now. This is hypomania, you should reconsider if you want to do this. Yeah, that’s for buying a boat in a landlocked desert state, not for fucking writing. When it’s not the thoughtful me, that probably (certainly) thinks he knows more than he really does about bipolar, trying to keep me away from things, it’s this weird illogical trepidation about perfection or the lack thereof. Diana thinks it’s because I got made fun of a lot growing up, but I think it’s the opposite. This is the thing I was always praised for. This and speaking. I wasn’t consulted about my voice, but people seem to like it. Great.

I earned this.

Or maybe I didn’t, fuck. Who knows? I don’t know if there’s anything that lends one to being a better writer, but that feels a little out of the wheelhouse of evolution. I’m gonna take it, I’m gonna claim it, because it makes as much or more sense than not doing so.

I just get wrapped around this axle of “you’ve always been told you’re good at this, so that’s the bar, good. Is this thing you’re going to write good? What if it isn’t?”

Okay, what if it isn’t? Who dies? Writing is so far removed from consequence most of the time that the question is just asinine. What if it isn’t? Then…I still wrote something? I wrote something kinda bad?

Okay?

I don’t even have to share it.

That’s just journaling.

It’s really easy to not share something bad after you wrote it. In fact, it’s the opposite of action. So why not worry about that when the time comes?

Oh, is it because you want to share it, so you want it to be good? Yeah, that’s generally what we do indeed want. But an important step in the process is take the cap off the pen and fucking GO. In fact, that improves the odds of it being good significantly, by virtue of its existence lending some semblance of possibility to the rest of it. Fight one battle at a time.

Heaven forbid somebody I don’t know harumphs and grumbles, “Oh, this piece by Daniel wasn’t as good as that other piece.” Yeah, sorry, would you like a refund?

It’s honestly crazy that given how generally rational I am, or at least would like to think I am, that I can get twisted around the axle in this way about something that logically makes not an iota of sense. You do the thing, then you decide what to do with the thing, and both sides of the decision have no consequences. With the notable exception that I did write and thus probably improved my chances of the next thing being good, by one percent or a hundred. Reps. This extends to other things I’ve had trepidation about beginning, as though I don’t want to start a hobby because I’m not going to be any good at the hobby when I do it.

Correct?? Nobody’s really born good at shit. There’s a distinction between being born with the potential to be good at a thing and being born good at the thing. Nobody’s got the latter except for crying and taking a dump, and even those aren’t guarantees!

Take the cap off the pen and go, would ya? Pick up the brush, unwrap the clay, sling the guitar around your neck. Anything but the cowardice masquerading as perfectionism. Cowardice isn’t innate, it’s learned, it’s imparted by outside forces as a survival technique. And by and large, our brains aren’t great at deciphering the difference between fear of failure and fear of being eaten by wolves.

David Eddings is my favorite fiction author. I find his stuff so approachable, simple and easy, clear motives and plots. And he once confided to readers that he wrote a book so bad he fucking burned it. It’s not just doing that, it’s admitting that you did that which really sends the message. Nobody bats a thousand. Do it right once out of every three times for twenty years and they’d put you in the baseball hall of fame.

If you were looking for a sign to start, or continue, doing something, maybe this is it. Go.