Having no creativity has taught me something important. I first heard this idea as an illustration at a talk by some speaker I no longer remember.
“How much money do you think David Brenner gets paid to feel funny in Vegas?” asked the speaker.
The audience shouted out several figures.
“Zero,” replied the speaker, “Brenner doesn’t get paid anything to feel funny–he gets paid to be funny.”
Yesterday I wrote about 8 or so posts for Whore Church. Some of them are pretty good. Funny. Sarcastic.
But I didn’t feel it, I just did it. I pretended to be a funny, sarcastic, motivated, creative writer.
And it worked.
September 2, 2007 at 8:19 am
You silly man. The depth of value you place upon your skill as a writer is endearing. Truly.
One of the assumptions about writers that entirely amuses me is that we are angst-ridden artistic souls just this side of losing it, that one must have an addiction of some sort (preferably absinthe) in order to tap into that well of creativity. “Fine line between genius and insanity…,” or, as Jo March succinctly put it in Little Women, “Genius burns.”
The truth of the matter is that it takes a certain set of skills, a certain level of creativity and a certain amount of patience to be able to string together words and pieces of punctuation in a way that becomes “literature.”
Make no mistake about it, whether you felt it or not, you are a funny, sarcatic, motivated, creative writer. Drop the pretense.
September 2, 2007 at 8:38 am
Thanks for your comment.
Yeah, self-deprecation makes the girls all hot and bothered.
You don’t know me yet (hopefully that will change—but not in a kinky way), but I have a great deal of confidence in my ability to learn to do just about anything. I know that I am an excellent technical writer. I am a pretty good humor writer when I want to make the effort.
I’ll be a great pulp-fiction writer one of these days. May even choose to make my living that way—or not, I haven’t decided if I want to yet.
What I really want is to make $1/word or more for my blogging.
Addictions? Certainly. My redhead.
September 2, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Silly again. *smirk* If you think self-deprecation would get me “all hot and bothered,” you obviously don’t know me yet (and/or haven’t delved very deeply into my blog.) And yes, hopefully that will change, but don’t hold your breath.
i’m not terribly easy to know.