Oh that crazy, zany Chicago literary elite, why are they always so…right?
by Wyl Villacres
Writing sucks. Seriously. And not in the Dorothy Parker “I hate writing, I love having written” bullshit way, either. I mean, the act of putting words on paper is shitty, and she’s right in that regard, but the things that come after are just as bad. Because when you’re writing as your form of art, the second half of the writing process is even worse. Or at least for me it is.
I want to start off by saying that I’m not going to come around to some fantastic conclusion about why it’s important to preserver and how practice makes perfect or even-if-you-fail-you-still-need-to-do-it because 1. I don’t know you or your life so how could I give you advice? 2. I suck at this whole thing, so I don’t have the resume to back any advice I’d give, and 3. I don’t even have advice for myself. This isn’t a place to find answers, because in the end, all I have are questions. But writing, hacking away in my apartment or in the coffee shop, between jobs or at absurd hours, starts to get horrifyingly solitary, and I need to be in public.