September 3rd, 2012

I don’t even have to write this

So it turns out Andrew Hood has a blog. Did you know that? I didn’t know that until this week, despite the fact that there seem to be posts on there going back a couple years. Why don’t people tell me stuff?

Anyway, as with most fiction writers I admire who bother to blog, Mr. Hood blogs pretty well. And he wrote this post that pretty much encapsulates everything that’s wrong with my life right now (except quiche-related issues, which he doesn’t cover). You’ll have to strike out most of the history, as I have never done most of the things Andrew has, and nearly all the swearing, but what remains is super-true. I advise reading the whole post, but here’s the crushingly accurate kicker:

“Failing’s the worst, but it’s the only result that I can ever count on. Every fucking day I sit down and fail fucking miserably. I did this in my basement years ago, with late night softcore on mute. And I failed big time in university, though never as bad as the fuckfaces who were convinced the drivel they’d managed was tops. And when I got a fulltime job, my failure was contained to the pockets of free time I managed. So I suppose writing’s always been easy, but it’s the failure that’s gotten difficult. Somehow I’ve found myself in a place where I say that writing’s what I do and is a thing I’m supposed to be good at. So when, out of sight, I spend a day producing plodding, trite dreck, the consequences of that failure feels more severe, intractable, fucking absolute.”