25. Find The Game

April 6th 2020, Monday

Dear Blog,

I got drunk last night. Drank a bottle of whiskey while watching Episodes, a comedy series from Showtime. I also wrote the last blog post while drunk. It does not make sense. I will keep it.

Realized a few things now that I am sober, ish.

If you were my student I’d tell you to be clever on someone else’s dime. You’re not Noel Coward. Cleverness is a brand of hiding. It will never make your reader cry. It seldom makes readers genuinely belly laugh and never breaks anyone’s heart.

— Chuck Palahniuk

Cleverness is a brand of hiding. That hit home for me. This also explains why my writing is always lagging because I spent so much time trying to sound smart. It brings down the momentum of the story. Chuck also said something about sustaining tension in his book. Writers have a tendency to run from tensions, probably why they are attracted to writing in the first place. But you should never resolve tension so easily. Don’t resolve one until you introduced a bigger one. I guess writing as a practiced form of art does take some training in the right direction.

Let’s keep practicing. Find the game, and play the fuck out of it.