Unworthy of the Title

I certainly said a mouthful in that last blog post. If you haven’t read it yet, go back and do so. It’s the one slightly lower on the page if you scroll down. I’m not saying it’s a matter of life and death, but this post is a continuation of what I said down there. The tone is different, for sure, and I’m no longer rambling in out-of-control run-on sentences to convey a jumbled, mixed up mind, but this post stands on the shoulders of its predecessor. Oddly enough, it was supposed to be the beginning of a daily onslaught of affirmations that never came to fruition. It was called “Day One,” after all. It was written on a Thursday with the intention that Friday would be Day Two, and then Saturday would be Day Three, and so on and so forth. That didn’t happen though. Sometimes things didn’t go according to plan, as they shouldn’t. I personally don’t deserve to have things go according to plan until I’m fully capable of dealing with the effects of when they don’t.

If things had gone as planned, today would be Day 16. Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be something else if I was actually able to write and produce something for that many consecutive days? In that fictional scenario, I would be what you may call a writer. Wouldn’t it have been special if those theoretical consecutive days built little by little and step by step to something grand and poignant and beautiful? That was what I had hoped for, but hoping alone doesn’t get things done. Action is needed. I swear I tried to take action since “Day One” but nothing came from it. Several times over the last two weeks I attempted to write a second installation, however belatedly, and several times I failed. How exactly did I fail though? Is there any outcome of my writing that could be considered a success if all I do is post to a blog that no one reads because I don’t promote it to the world, or at the very least my friends and family? If there is no chance for success, how can there be failure?

Well, if you don’t mind me responding to a question no one cares to have answered: I suppose I failed because I liked “Day One,” quite simply, and I wasn’t going to follow it up with something I did not like. Each time I tried again – whether I wrote three paragraphs, one paragraph, or just one sentence – I eventually made the executive decision that I was producing pure and utter crap, so I stopped. I’m my own worst enemy and my own biggest critic. Nothing and no one has ever stood in my way that is a more formidable foe than myself. In the last two days I’ve been reading a lot of my old blog posts and short stories written circa the Kiel’s-going-through-a-major-life-crisis years of 2009-2010, and I have to say: I’m a good writer, or at least I have the potential to be when I’m writing on a consistent basis. I have earned the right to be confident in my abilities, but I am a self-conscious and insecure bastard who has ultimately accomplished nothing through my writing (i.e. write a book or sell a script) because I’ve stood in my way these last few years anytime I’ve picked up a pen or sat at a computer and tried to write again. When I did those things, it didn’t take long before what began as a whisper in the back of my mind telling me I wasn’t writing anything worth continuing grew to a full on scream of disapproval and I abandoned the project altogether. That is no one’s fault but my own.

To be frank about where this is all coming from: a friend of a friend is having her book published and I am extremely jealous. I wish I could be jealous because I have a book of my own I can be angry at Penguin for not choosing to print and disseminate to the world, but instead I’m jealous because I’m not disciplined enough to have even created something worthy of a major publishing company’s rejection. In these last few years where I’ve been writing-dormant (which have not-so-coincidentally been the last few years that I’ve been employed full-time), couldn’t I have devoted my time and energy to at least one project that could have been written and completed by now? Shouldn’t I at nearly twenty-seven years old – having considered myself a writer since I was a teenager – have written at least one book by now, even one not good enough to be published? If I could only be so lucky!

At what point do I lose the right to call myself a writer? I personally think I already have. The second this act no longer became habit is the second I was no longer able to consider myself a wordsmith, a bard or a scribe, even if I have been able to maintain my ability to list synonyms in groups of three. I need to flex my writing muscle regularly once again, which is why I originally set out to write Day One and Day Two and many more days subsequently until I reached a point where I was not only writing habitually like I used to but writing at a high level as well. My strategy failed, though, and it failed quickly. Operation Wake-Up-the-Inner-Vonnegut was a well-conceived and valiant attempt that utterly produced no benefits and many casualties. Here I am again, however, trying to jumpstart this machine and get the motor purring once more. If nothing else, the failure produced shame that brought me back for seconds.

Let’s be honest with each other: I’m in my late twenties – let’s call it “almost thirty years old” for the sake of magnifying the ticking time bomb – and if I can’t do this better than good, I should just stop now. I do this to be great. I want to write a book that, when fully read and consumed, makes a person walk slowly and hypnotically toward his or her bedroom window, look out on the world and see more beauty and hope than was seen before those pages were read. That can only be achieved if I write well, and I will only write well if I write often, and I will only write often if I once again am a writer.