Would You?

Sometimes Lefsetz’s writing just kills me dead.

The question is, are you working with your head or heart? At some point you’ve got to stop being who your parents want you to be and start being who you are.

…

Would you rap if there was no Biggie, no Jay-Z?

Would you play the guitar if there was no Eddie Van Halen?

Would you be in the music business if David Geffen hadn’t made all that money?

If not, give up. Please. You’re hurting yourself. And you’ll leave no lasting mark.

But if you need to play, don’t lament that you’re not a millionaire. The music should be enough. If you’ve got a roof over your head, if you can pay the bills, you’re on the map. Affecting a coterie deeply is more important than being a momentary comet, burning brightly and then flaming out.

I read something like that and I get a little shaky because it hits so close to home, like he knows a secret about me that I don’t want anyone to know. It’s easy to be snarky, cynical, to be in it for the money, to be ironic. It’s hard to believe in something.

People ask me all the time, where is this going? What’s your goal? What’s the end game? I tell them I want to be a writer.

But that’s the simple, reductionist answer. The truth is I need to write. And I can only hope that someday someone will give me money to do it. It’s not the greatest business plan but it’s the truth.

See, I’ve tried to quit writing. I’ve tried a lot. From twenty to twenty six I tried to quit writing every six months. I’d start a blog and I’d just write the shit out of it. Words would pour out of me. I’d post twice a day like I had to hit some magic number before they turned the Internet off.

Then something would happen. I’d realize that I didn’t have an audience. Or the wrong person would find it, a family member, a friend. I’d get nervous because my rough edges were showing, and I’d wonder what was going to happen when people knew things about me. Because my words weren’t professional. I wasn’t writing about a cool subject like marketing, or a hip subject like social networking. I wasn’t writing about writing or making money on the Internet. I wasn’t dispensing advice to those in my generation. I was just writing the kind of things I wanted to read and I wasn’t strong enough to stand on that. Something would spook me, I’d drop the writing, walk away from it, and find something new to be interested in.

But a few months later, I’d start again. There’d be a new service. Diaryland or Livejournal or Blogger. I’d bounce between, torn between wanting to have someone read my words and afraid to be judged by them.

We love to scream about the narcissist. We love to tell those around us that we don’t twitter and we don’t read status updates on facebook. We love to surround ourselves with people so we can tell them how much we don’t give a shit about what other people are doing.

But is it narcissistic to just want to connect? To put yourself out there and say “this is what I’m about, what are you about?” I don’t know. I’ve read so many snarky condemnations of the narcissist that I couldn’t recognize one if I was holding up their mirror for them.

At some point you’re going to have to decide if you’re afraid of what other people are going to say about you. And if you are, then you’re never going to step out and do something great. Because if you do, if you step out, you’re going to attract haters. And you’re most likely going to fail in the attempt, and still, you’re going to attract mountains of criticism. It’s not fair but it happens and most of it, the worst of it, is going to come from your own brain.

And so for years I fought that battle. The first thing I ever put on the internet was a zine called NaCL. Salt. I wanted to write a monthly newsletter. Silly stupid shit. I had it online for about twelve hours, submitted it to search engines. This was in the days when Yahoo mattered and before anyone had googled anything. This was back when if you built something, the internet was small enough that other people would find it. The first email I got was one telling me that my writing sucked and that I should quit. And to a 19 year old me, that mattered. I tore the whole site down – a site that had taken me weeks to hand code – the next day.

So I wrote in secret after that. Wrote short stories, essays. I’d just write to write, because it was fucking awesome and I liked doing it. Every once in a while, like a build up of pressure, I’d crack. We used to all hang out on this mailing list and some nights I’d pound out a short story and send it to the whole list. Just because I wanted to know that it was in front of someone. And I could lie to myself and say that at least someone was reading it.

There’s this scene in Almost Famous:

I used to do speed. You know, and sometimes a little cough syrup? I’d stay up all night, just writing and writing. I mean, like pages of dribble — You know, about the faces of Coltrane. You know, just to fucking write.

I love that scene. I love that scene because I’ve written and deleted more in the last ten years than I’ll probably write in the next ten.

I didn’t find writing. I didn’t say, I’m going to be a writer. Writing was just the thing I did when I burned out everything else in my life. Writing was the one thing I came back to time and time again in all those quiet moments when I wanted to understand the world around me. Everyone who talks about finding their passion has it backwards. You don’t find your passion, it’s not hiding under a rock, waiting to be picked up and taken home. Your passion is already there; it’s the thing you’re doing every day. It’s the thing you do when you need a break, when it you need to blow off steam. And if there’s nothing there yet, there will be, just give it time. It took me ten years to finally attach my name to my writing. You’ve got time. Don’t panic.