everyone says 90% of writing is revising.
i happily agreed up till last week but now the idea pains me.
editing seems so clinical.
my editing is a shitty make-up job on top of actual feeling. sometimes it cracks and drops of emotion leak out but most of it still reads overdressed, artificial, creepy doll-like.
like i don't want a single person in the world to think i'm ugly,
so i overcompensate, hiding everything, painting a completely new face.
there's no feeling in my editing.
maybe i'm doing it wrong.
but what could be more natural than what poured out of you when you're fingers were first on the keyboard?
what could be more unnatural than going back in time to the middle of your sentence and changing a word to a longer one because you think it flows better?
if it flowed better why didn't it flow out of you the first time? legit asking, don't actually know.
i don't like this new wave of 'brevity is king' shit
where bloggers optimize for our trash attention spans by writing at a first grade level
and they'll start with natural sounding sentences like, 'write short sentences so your audience doesn't get bored' and then think NINE WORDS, GOD DAMN, THIS IS TURNING INTO A TEXTBOOK. how can i cut this in half? how can i make this PUNCHY? i need a good word. tersely? lemme pull up a thesaurus
and after a few minutes of whittling they'll end up with 'Write tersely.'
or just tweet instead
and the small nuances that appear in their natural flow of thought that would actually distinguish them from the 1000s of other SEO optimized blogs disappear and we are left with a blog post that is just a slight permutation of words from the other 10000 blog posts about writing tersely
maybe i'm wrong
maybe this blog post would be much better as tweeted aphorisms
like "Editing dilutes."
that was bad. i don't have this skill.
terse writing is it's own kind of aesthetic i guess and it's fun to read in it's own way and it has it's own place in the world
but even dishwasher manuals
wouldn't it be fun to read a dishwasher manual that was just filled with passion? with grand metaphors and biblical references?
edited writing can be made beautiful too but it feels different.
emotions generate the drive to write, generate the language, and so the language you used, right then, shouldn't that be perfect?
could you imagine a poet stopping halfway through a verse to consider whether the theme of his poem fit the overall vibe of the collection?
there's just something beautiful about spontaneous speech.
could by why podcasts are so popular.
and there's something beautiful about spontaenous writing.
it's why Kerouac is famous.
he wrote all of on the road in 3 days on amphetamines on one long scroll, no edits and yeah some of it is shitty but that can be said about most books.
and when it works it really works.
when i write i write painfully and stuntedly until one day i'm editing for the 100th time and say fuck this this is terrible i'm getting nowhere and just re-write half of it in a thirty minute burst of enthusiasm and then i try to not touch it because i know that those moments of thoughtless intuition are the only important ones
but since thirty minutes is my cap and its still only half done i have to dilute that gift from my subconscious with numb glue and filler and padding
but even getting any feeling at all out of myself meets my bar
look at this video of desiigner screaming adlibs
you think he pensively goes back to the lyrics of Panda, written in a composition notebook, pauses for a moment, and carefully switches a DRRRRRRRAAAA to a GIT GIT GIT?
no
he definetely just gets hype as fuck and lets the words pour out of him and so the words are just a manifestation of feeling
as opposed to the words being manipulated to evoke an emotion
it's the difference between a Thor 2 and Gummo
and so now i write like i'm journaling
i write like a 13 year old girl on 2010 tumblr with no self awareness
i write to express and not to communicate
because writing with an audience in mind will never be transcendent
and yeah this isn't transcendent either
but why block the possibility?
why think "i will never have a stroke of creative inspiration so i'm just going to read 7 Tips For Writing Quality Content so i can maximize reach"?
isn't living fully about passion
i want to see yelp reviews of taco bell like
I SALIVATED NOT AT THE BEAUTY OF THE CASHIER BUT AT THE MEXICAN PIZZA IN FRONT OF ME, WARM, SENSUAL, MOIST WITH FIRE SAUCE AND IN THOSE MOMENTS ALL HESITATION DISSAPATED, ALL THE JACK DON'T DO THIS AGAIN YOU'RE GOING TO SHIT BLOOD TOMORROW MORNING AND I TORE INTO IT WITH ABANDON AND MASHED BEANS DRIPPED OFF MY NOSE AND DOWN MY CHIN AND ONLOOKERS GAPED AT THIS BEAUTIFUL DISPLAY OF PURE LUST, PIZZA AND MAN BECOMING ONE
not
Got two Mexican Pizzas. Taste: 5/5. Good location, good service. -2 stars for diarrhea the next morning.
yeah its shorter but its boring.
life is emotional and i think everything can be elevated.
there's probably a balance, but with all these listicles i think it's safe to over-correct.
all that being said i still edit. fuck me i know.
i wouldn't subject you to my initial stream of conscioussness
BUT
IN A PERFECT, THEORETICAL, WORLD
IF I WAS A GREAT WRITER
there's no way i'd revise.
i'm only revising because even my peak moments of possession are perforated by useless wandering thoughts and rational thinking.
so i have to revise to fill in gaps.
what i mean is: i'll be writing and feeling good and passionate and then think, "hm i'm kind of hungry right now i could go for some Panda" mid sentence and lose my place and think "FUCK what was i typing where did the inspiration go" and then kind of force myself forward, force words out, to try and trick myself back into that flow state but the words sound bad
and so there the words are emotionless and uncharged but i don't want to delete them because that's all i have and now im frustrated and just want to be done with this shit
so i tend and optimize and revise to make them palatable.
that's why i revise.
if i could write 1000 words straight with an expansive playful awareness feeling good the whole time i'd publish it immediately.
fuck a spelling mistake, they add character.