(I'm not witty today)

So I really suck at spelling. The three of you know that, you cope with it, because you care about the overall message. My punctuation is really kind of an art form. I say this because I use semi-colons like Jackson Pollock might use the color yellow. Periods come as frequently as pomegranite soup, or something as equally disgusting.

The general consensus (did I mess that up?) among my friends is that I write better than I talk. I'm the kid who says "like" fifty times just discribing his lunch order. When I talk I get too excited about what I'm trying to say and forget to actually say it. When I write words like "privy", and "ensconced" come to me easily. They're magical letters that float together in my alphabet soup.

I've been thinking about what I really honestly want to do with my life. This being the time when people usually think about things like that. I've wanted, since the moment I picked up "Where The Red Fern Grows". I wanted to make 11 year old boys cry in their beds. I want to make people laugh like David Sedaris, and cry like Tim O'Brien.

Now I'm not so sure. I dont know if I could actually make someone cry with beautiful prose, if in fact my prose is beautiful at all. Maybe I should be a journalist? But the hours, the endless fact checking and rechecking, the years it takes before you actually get to write what you want. And all I would want to write is four page exposes about Darfur, and Burma, and follow ups on the Dahlai Lama. I wouldnt want to write about Jeffy's auto-mart. I hope there isnt a place like that in exsistence, its probably in Michigan.

I remember reading The Hours and hearing Richard talk about how he wanted to be a writer. To write about a moment, the whole moment, something so small and significant broken down into letters and words; loved somehow defined by ink on a piece of paper. He couldnt do it, and he knew he couldnt do it. I fear that I cant do it either. I know that I've been in love, with James. I know what it feels like to need someone there with you, I know lonliness. I know what it feels like to be emotionally abandoned by a parent. I know the void of having ceased to love someone. I know the slow and painful process of healing. I know that in alot of ways I am a soul covered in bandaids.

But could I have a character like that? Could I "create" a person who had fears, and needs and wants; hopes and dreams crushed by life, a Charles Foster Kane, a David Copperfield. The thought of being responsible for the lives of others, fictional but still people, is so frightful to me. I make them cry, I make them laugh, I make them fuck; and in turn you, the audience, cries, laughs, and gets off in response.

I scare myself into writer's block sometimes. But the need to tell a story prevails and I write more. I write journal entries, poems(bad poems), and I draft novels and stories.

My friend MP told me about students of his that want to be writers "because they think writers dont actually work". Its true. Many people dont want to actually have to sit and write the book, let alone write it well. I want to write the book, I have written a book, or a novella, but I'm afraid of doing it half assed. I'm afraid of writing about true love and having my audience laugh, or worse pretend to understand and then laugh.

Books are crowning achievments for anyone. They're often overlooked as something alot of people do after Grad School. But its work, hard work. Rewrites, sudden moments of inspiration, late nights spent thinking "Just until I get to the heart of it. For every 10 pages written 2 are saved and thats really good.

I want to write about it all. I want to write about true love, and talk at length about a perfect cup of coffee, or those little moments that you never tell anyone about. I want to make money from it, so I can travel and write about traveling. I want to describe riding on an elephant, and running from a bear.

I will be a writer, in the sense that I will put words on page describing and event, Ink on paper. But will I be Cormac McCarthy? Will I be Joan Didion, or Ernest Hemingway. Will I be Keroauc, or Ginsberg? Or will I be discovered after I stopped writing, found in on the few remaining bookstores by a young boy struggeling to find himself in a world thats moving too fast. I can only hope for that.

Life is short, and I'm not one to giving up something that I really love. So if I dont ever write "The Great Gatsby" or "On The Road" I may end up being okay with that. What I wont be okay with is if I never tried to write. Fear is healthy, thats why people have dreams, because they're liberating and frightening.

I'm going to try, I'm going to write, and I'm going to get published. It may not be "Ulysses" but its something, right? There's honor in the trying. I just hope my editor doesnt mind that I cant spell.