Bookmark #773

Sat last night and imagined, once again, the kind of book I want to write. My perfection got the better of me, and I did not begin again. This is not a new lament, but it has begun to strike a nerve. I will soon be twenty-seven years old, and I hope when I am at the beach, getting drunk out of my wits, I will also remember that the book remains unwritten. It is not that hard to sit and write things. If these words are any indication, I reckon it is the easiest thing to do in my life. It is only the indecision of what story I want to tell, and no, it is not cluelessness—I only seem to have too many ideas. It becomes impossible to choose. The average life, and this is by all means an average one, gives you so many stories that if you sat and began to write all of them, you would be dead before you knew it, having only waded in shallow waters of the pool of potential tales to tell. But then, if I do not write at all in this paralysis, I would be dead before writing one. It is a simple argument: you write what you can. And I know this, I know this, but I must begin, I must choose, and that is a fatal flaw: I want everything, and since everything is impossible, I get nothing in the end. I want to chase every vision, every idea, and every person I could ever become, and now, I see this flaw is reflected even in my writing, or lack thereof. I do not have a defence or answer for “How long will I write these vignettes, these meandering, twisted pieces that go nowhere, instead of stories and books filled with stories?” The irony of writing day after day and being unable to say, “I write stories” is not lost on me. But it has started to get under my skin. I believe that is a good thing. It has begun to stare at me like a ghoul hiding in the corner. Every piece I write is an excuse I make not to write the story I wish to tell. There is little else to say. It is a Sunday. I have written again. I do not know what to do with it. All these words are words wasted.

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