The question of why we, or more specifically I, write is something that I have made an attempt at tackling in a number of previous posts. The more I write and the more I examine my motivations the more it complicates itself and coincidentally the clearer it becomes. A metaphor for life if ever there was one.
So I began to think about who I write for. That’s a subject that each of us should consider. It was prompted by a script I wrote recently and a conversation or two that I have had with trusted friends since.
Put simply, I now write for nobody but myself. I may, in the past, have written for certain crowds. The horror crowd and the 2000 AD crowd for example or those that are entertained or amused by my outbursts on the podcast or in the blog. These people I have written for in varying degrees of ass clenching ineptitude or a vague sense of self-satisfaction. Scroll back and you will find a few examples without a doubt.
I began writing on and off in the nineties. It kept me happy during long periods of work away from home and the fact that all I was doing was writing about things and people that annoyed me gave me a fuel to push on through the long and exhausting hours. I suppose those amongst us with a functioning brain need to explore the creative side of our thoughts from time to time. It gives a certain release and a feeling of freedom, a distraction from the real world.
Once you have decided that all you want to write about are things that amuse, entertain or stimulate yourself then you are diving into an ocean of freedom. You are unchained by the idiots of the world and allowed to bounce off the waves crushing their insipid faces when they shout ‘format, ‘structure’, ‘populism’, ‘marketing’ and ‘Sales, sales, sales’.
These books that you see everywhere on ‘How to write’ are an attack on the experimentation that made the great writers so interesting and adventurous. Would Shakespeare have written a scene to the chants of ‘We Buy Any Car’? Would Burroughs have formulated stories keeping in mind that he would have to bookend each chapter with the appearance of a Meerkat? Would Philip K. Dick have thought about including a Hostess Fruit Pie with anything other than a withering eye to sarcasm and satire?
So..... I’ve decided to fuck everyone. Fuck them all and their tiny shit eating grovelling to the public attitudes. What did ‘The Public’ or ‘The Community’ or ‘The Consumer’ ever really give us? Mostly they’ve given me Erectile Dysfunction medicine, a variety of pronouns I don’t understand, Brexit, Spicy Cider, appearance over content, a lack of context, unfunny cartoons and Herpes!
Don’t listen to those outside voices. Don’t ‘Bounce your ideas off anyone’. Don’t ‘workshop a script’, don’t ‘Join a Writers Room’.
Don’t compromise.
Write something well and with beauty and passion and in a way that makes you happy.
Fuck all the rest!
Many thanks for reading. (Although let’s face it I don’t really give a flying fart! It’s just a cool sign-off I’ve been using for a decade!)
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