A Capital Offence

Are you like me in that when you’re NOT writing you’re anxious about READING and when you’re NOT reading you’re anxious about WRITING? Or when you’re neither reading NOR writing you’re anxious about either reading or writing or SUBMITTING to magazines or NETWORKING or looking for OPPORTUNITIES? Or when you’re writing you’re so DESPERATE to stop and do anything else, you’re anxious about not paying SURGICAL MICRO-ATTENTION to the text? Or when you’re writing you’re anxious about the NO POUNDS in your bank account and want to get a PROPER JOB that pays ACTUAL MONEY? Or when you’re looking for a job, you’d rather SCRATCH YOUR OWN EYES OUT than work when writing is all you want to do, despite the fact writing is a HORRIBLE THING and pays no money and no one reads anything you write, even when it’s published, and it’s much easier to UNBLOCK LAVVIES than be the new Joyce? Or do you not have these concerns? I want to be you.

Also. Are you like me in that EVERYTHING YOU WRITE is never as good as what came before, and what is written today is STEAMING SHITE compared to yesterday’s shite which today looks like GOLDEN DODO PELLETS? Do you stare at your words hoping they might magic themselves into GOREGOUS IMAGERY, beautiful prose, dazzling language, all that SHIT IN BOOK REVIEWS? Do you want to KILL ALL THOSE FANNIES who write one book with an orchard on the cover and get gigs in MA PROGRAMS, forcing their students to read BOLIVIAN POETRY until their brains burst open? Would you rather stick an axe in your head than write another story NO ONE READS? Do you worry endlessly about how your style is EVOLVING and how you are evolving even though you have no idea what this actually MEANS since no one reads your work, or the people who do read it have no time to ANALYSE THE MINUTIAE of your work to map out an EVOLUTIONARY PATTERN? Do you? Then you might be me. Or prone to exaggeration.