Is
it
getting published in the New Yorker?
I just got rejected in that magazine, while I was talking to my best friend.
Pure automation—thank you for submitting… but no thanks. Antiseptic, is the word.
Is
it
writing every day?
I fail at that.
Is
it
getting published? I did that.
Is
it
getting your name in the paper? That was a different century.
Is
it
being a novelist? It could be, but there are so many novels I don’t want to read, and millions I don’t even know about.
I think being a writer is…
when I wake up, dissatisfied with my life, and I think about my options…
and each one, is full, of a kind of realism, that makes me sick.
What I imagine the world to be, is…
only my imagination.
I accept this,
but I also understand that I can do something about it.
My world is divided into two realities:
the one where I am boring, and turning pale, like the walls, I work within
and the one where I am driving a speedboat, over blue water, to a green island, with a deserted beach
where my typewriter sits, in a limestone villa
and I can crank-out thousands of words, just to stay there
a bit longer.
Back in the real world, people wonder why I haven’t moved on with my life
and it’s because…
I have become a real writer.
My imagination
is the best place to be
There is nothing like it
beyond the island
of my fantasy.
Intellectual Shaman 
Perhaps asking what is an unreal writer highlights the surrealism of such thoughts.
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Yes, simon ashcroft! That is an interesting thought, indeed.
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your colleague Charles once said, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. If you’re going to try, go all the way. my son
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Yes, project33. Those are the very words I live by! Charles knew how to write from where it is at!
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hell, if there is nothing out there worth striving for what the hell are we all doing here. if you can’t escape, you can’t live. my writing is in fits and starts, but reading is cheaper than drugs and gives a much less dangerous high and come down.
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Yes, nwbooks–I can’t understand why other people don’t understand that reading can be a drug. 🙂
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and one just as powerful as any hallucinogenic. where else in the world, could you be sent to face your most primal of fears or be taken on an intergalactual rollercoaster. you would be deemed mad. yet it is found on the pages of books. words chosen and written to purvey such imaginations.
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“Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit.” Nietzsche — and to add my own two cents — when you really are a writer — you put in everything. You get back what you put in. So hmm perhaps writing could be an addiction — an escape – why do we pay so much for entertainment – cause reality sucks sometimes – we can create anything we want to in our minds – bring it to life on a page or a screen – or a podcast — create – it is a bit like playing god — I got stuck once – still am – because I created fabulous characters – mapped out a plot with pit falls – but I liked them so much – I have difficulty writing out the painful consequences of their choices. I suspended them in time. left them hanging. A writer? Someone who can finish off a plot — for me at least. 😉
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