Creative Endeavor

At about five this morning I woke up and it occurred to me that getting back to sleep just was not going to happen. As it happens, my father was also awake at this early hour, smoking his brains out and watching MSNBC, or the Today Show. One of those. It was too early to join him for coffee, and instead I leafed through the pages of my incomplete, unpublished and mostly unseen novel/script. Over the years some scenes were added while others were thrown in the trash. I like what I'm left with, even though it would make little sense to anyone but me.

A creative endeavor that intrigues and entertains me, and nothing more. And my poems, too. They are mostly unseen by any eyes other than mine, but I don't mind. It's a mercy to my friends, who have better things to do than read the overwrought poetry of Fatty McCrazy (me). My friend Clare wrote a 50,000 word novel just for the fun of it, for National Novel Writing Month a few years back. She seemed to enjoy it, and it was well done. The joy of writing for the sake of writing.

There are a few people out there who dislike me in the extreme, mainly because of my political disposition coupled with how I enjoy debating philosophy and politics. If you want to talk about Skinner's Problem of Evil, I'm your man. Existential nihilism, Keynesian economics, "The Invisible Hand" of laissez-faire economics, national health care, the Red Shift in physics, NAFTA, Obama, a woman's right to choose, gay marriage...whatever you want to talk about, I'm sure to have a strong opinion on it. Out there on the Internet, there are some people who want to pop me in the nose for my socialist/atheist philosophy.

These people get angry, because I'm much smarter than they are, and they mock my attempts at creative writing. It's one of the few criticisms that bothers me not a bit. Not a jot or a tittle. Most of what I write is for me, and it's writing that I like, not having written something. One I'm done with a short story or chapter or paragraph or line, I tend to just throw it out. It's not the key to heaven, and warrants at most a long last look. Then I move on to something else.

Writing for fun is a blast. Writing for others, to show off or tell a story, is an anxious festival of fear and loathing.

That said, I'm working on a summary of Last American on Earth. I'll show it to friends and family and get some feedback. If there is anything there worth a serious effort, maybe I'll work on that. I don't know.

Now if you'll excuse me, there is a fellow outside hammering and one of us has got to go.