Quoted

by Blue_Notebook

“Oh, so you’re a writer? Can you give me fifty essays regarding the society-tighty-tighty-blah-blah, ten good poems about whatever you prefer they will be about, sixty articles too targeting the politicians because, you know, they are and must be examined once and a while but not too much, all right? And also nine novels three of them focusing on love, the other hate, and the other—well, whatever you’d prefer it to be about again. Look, and you need to pass me all this tonight. You have ten minutes remaining so you’d better be off or off your job goes,” said the monster. And so, the writer quoted the following;

1. ‘Ideas I am abundant of. But of images, I am deprived.’

• You don’t write a piece which not even you can see. I tried doing it once but it’s as if I’m just drawing my pen in the dark. The words contain no life, the sentences don’t breathe, and the whole composition itself is blank although it is crammed full of words— of dead words. When I feel that my writing will go that way, I stop immediately, not wanting to kill another paper to waste or the laptop’s battery to some nonsense. And I suppose, as a reader too myself, I will never fancy reading such an empty piece. But how does this happen? More often than not, ideas are ample for the writer to fish on. Those who aren’t writers might say that this is actually a blessing to us, when it rains of fish I mean (or dolphins, sharks most of the time, and rarely do whales come). I think so too, at first, casting out a bigger net and getting them all ready for dinner, supper, and breakfast for the other day to come. But that’s just what they are. Ingredients in order for me to create the main dish. Problem is that I am actually stuck in the sea, not being able to get out of it and cook them fishes at home. And it’s exhausting to think of what I’ll do with all these riches while the possibility of them rotting is just around, lurking in the corner of my own despair to see an island or two.

2. ‘So many to write, too little time to think.’

• Where, upon this whole shabby earth, have you seen a writer who lives to write only and to W-R-I-T-E ‘ONLY’? That is possible of course if that bloody creature has already created a name so far, have got his ‘royalties’, swam his flat arse up into the ‘New York Times Best Shindig-giddy-giddy’, and have got a pretty cold mansion fluctuating with maids and cooks and that bloody creature again surrounded by drafts in need of further editing, not by him but by his editor and publisher. All these which we, the ‘local’ ones can only but ill-afford. I write with full enthusiasm for just a mere second and then there comes the wailing of a relative, asking me to carry the crops of his own stupor-filled imaginings. This life isn’t like what those in K-Dramas depict where the writer does nothing else aside from writing, leaving the rest of life to the hands of his slaves. As I’ve said, the spirit of Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe combined have already possessed me and then there goes an inevitable errand, exorcising the mentioned legends above out of me and wetting the paper again of the blood of my— see. I heard the telly just now (they turned it on) and I forgot what to write next. So, you guess what blood of what that is that I was talking about.

3. ‘It isn’t always a full moon.’

• Ever heard of shapeshifters? Monsters? Demons? What about a mad writer? Ever heard of one? Now’s your chance to know one. Because most of the time, I intend to write something that is meant to be as dark as a smoker’s lung or as white as the smoker’s eyes once the smoker dies. If you are acquainted with my kind (or to me, if you’d prefer), then you might be immune to me asking for you to actually do something that could make me as mad as Rosie Real, or for me actually overdosing myself with alcoholic beverages or LSD alternatives. When I’m acting like this then thank all the gods because I am still sane. But when I actually resort to violence and great irritation, then visit my room in hell (south wing, its got a sign at its door saying, “BE BOLD” (don’t dwell on its meaning, you might not really desire to know what it means) and enter for you to see my tail dangling in the ceiling, then pull it and run out fast afterwards) if you still want your life saved. Not that I’m going to harm you but I potentially can just as everyone can. You see, in order to describe a flower fully, you must become the flower. Now, what if it’s not a flower but a murderer? What then? You can’t rely on textbooks nor on novels. They can’t answer the mere question of how it really feels to crave for a massacre. You need to feel it in order to describe it yourself. The challenge here is to actually have someone pissed-off in order for you to be pissed-off in turn and if lucky, become bloody mad enough to think of annihilation. Or just consume too much wine and possess this body after you die and live like me for a day or two. Then write about me once you get back in hell under the crime of possession.

“Oh, so you’re a writer?”

No, I’m not just a writer. I am formless. I am everything that I write. And I do not write just for the fun of it, not just for the money I can get out of it (but pay is as essential as my pen’s ink), not just because of the title I carry with me, not just because I was told to, not just because of some life extension mojo that positive-liars try to impose on the negatively perfect people, not just because I want to. I write because my creations mean that I am still breathing, that I can still do justice (even a scant of it) for the ill-treated ones of this world. And that’s what a writer is and should be, I guess.

 

Author’s Note:

Credits to the owner of the picture used.