Grinding Axes

Photo by Kevin Schmid on Unsplash

It’s fun to write a book while the world is burning, when Cybertrucks now officially have more rights than women. I’m trying to convince myself that it still matters. That books will still be a thing next year. (HAHA fuck me. Maybe I can sell them as bullet stoppers.) Nevermind that. How the fuck does what I say here matter. I don’t know. I try to tell myself that what I do has value but fucking hell. I guess there are 1001 substacks to follow if you want to try to keep abreast of what the fuck is burning today. I can’t pretend to know shit about fuck. I’m just working on a book. Like I did the last time the world was fucking burning. I guess it’s what I know. So it’s what I’m writing about. I appreciate y’all reading.

I’ve entered my least favorite phase of going through a draft. There are few phases, more than a few and only one or two are pleasant, though the less pleasant phases do tend to contribute to a cleaner house. These editing phases naturally come after the writing phases—the most common of which, at least to me, is writing in the style of “and then and then and then,” by which I mean, forgetting how to write at all. “And then and then and then” is not writing. It’s just a list of things that happened. But I’ll go days, pages and pages of it, weeks sometimes, not knowing why I hate the thing I’m writing, only that I do hate it. Then I see the pattern. And I can break it. Come at it from another angle. Start in the middle of the scene or start with a tangent and come back. Have a thought or a feeling about it and remember to write that down. Or just cut the fucking thing because it doesn’t matter.

I’ll go weeks wherein I can’t even look at the fucking thing. I know only that it’s the most boring shit I’ve ever written and no one would want to read it. The answer is always, and always will be, then don’t fucking write that part, but I take a minute or a month or six to get there.

Writing phases include the cleaning the baseboards phase and the maybe I should do mushrooms phase and the phase where I need a noise machine and the phase where only Mad Men can be playing in the background, the baseball is the only thing that works phase, the write a single graph and need a nap phase(s), the someone needs to read this and tell me it’s not crap so I can question their taste phase, the fuck it I quit phase(s), let’s make enough bone broth to survive the apocalypse, the you know what I should do is just write a different book that I just thought of and is much more fun phase, the stay up all night researching a thing that won’t even end up in the book phase, the reading anything else phase(s), the I’m gonna call people until someone answers and lets me talk about my book phase(s), the I have to drive until I’m unstuck phase, the watching Patriot again phase, the I have to work in a cafe phase, the maybe if I bought a typewriter phase, the I suck and will never write another good sentence phase(s), and there are the editing phases.

Editing phases include the extremely clean fridge and over-groomed dog and I should oil my boots and actually what I should do is buy a pair of goat leather ropers. Let’s research boot leather. What if I promise myself a tattoo. I should design my own tattoo. Or book a trip. Let’s research Osaka and whether I should buy a JR pass until 4am. I should try to relearn some Japanese. I can remember how to save a soul but I don’t know how to ask how much a plate of yakisoba costs. Why hasn’t anyone opened a yakisoba food truck. Should I open a yakisoba food truck? Can I make yakisoba?