imaginarycircus

My professor told us that novelists are more serious about writing than short story writers. I think they are more masochistic. And i have put myself in a very strange position here. I am writing slowly and painfully. It could be a low level bout of depression making me so sluggisg--but I think it is because of my internship. I see all these terrible manuscripts and I cannot guarantee that I am not producing one more piece of crap that will be endured for five pages and then thrown away.

Now, I want to think that I am different. That I am more talented. And sometimes I think I am. I know I have a better sense of craft than 99.9% of the stuff that I see. But still none of that equals publication or success. If I wasn't so in debt and so worried about money I probably would care far far less about making money and I would just write. And when I am writing I do not think about anything else at all. The problem is now. I'm sitting here drinking lukewarm coffee and perusing the NYTs and procrastinating and thinking that even if I draft this novel and then rewrite it any number of times, the likelihood of it ever seeing a bookstore shelf is pretty damn slim. Not because of my ability, but because the industry is pretty fucked up, and literary fiction really doesn't sell well. Publishers don't make that much money off the average lit fic book and so they really don't want them. yay!

I feel like that dumbass cooper in Camus' Les Muets. I'm training myself in an outmoded art form that will never make me any money. I don't need to be rich, but I do want to be able to eat and pay my student loans, and maybe buy new socks once every three years.