Capt. Eucalyptus
08-01-2002, 11:04 AM
A little stream of conciousness for your reading plaesure.
Why do I write?
Ever since I was a wee lad I’ve always wanted to do everything. I wanted to be an astronaut/fireman/jet pilot/scuba diver/archaeologist/herpetologist/astronomer/magician/comedian. I also loved to write. It has recently come to me that writing is my way to be all of these things. I can have a character that is any number of these or many characters. I also have strong opinions on food, movies, computers, beer, religion, and a whole host of other things. I was watching Food TV last night and there is a woman whose job it is to go around to various places and see if she can EAT AT RESTAURANTS for less than forty dollars in a day. This is a job for which she is getting paid!!! There are people that write books along the same lines. How could you not love that? I write because I love to write and now I just need to find someone wiling to pay me enough to support my family. I guess that’s the quandary, for most writers, is getting the door open a crack. It’s one of those Catch-22’s, you need experience to get hired and you need to get hired to get experience. So I have started to write more daily, even little stream of consciousness things like this to get my writing muscles back into shape and I hope to find some freelance writing gigs. I don’t know how to precisely go about doing that but I am making some inroads thanks to some friends. I guess not knowing never stopped me from pursuing a job in computers and I’m doing OK for myself money-wise.
I’ve kind of lived my whole life locked inside my head. I didn’t have a whole lot of friends growing up so I would create these universes in my head and populate them with all kinds of strange and wonderful creatures. I wish I had some of that stuff now but I guess the ideas I have now use those old ideas as a kind if compost. My ideas now are richer and darker than the old ones. So I guess most writers really are shit heads in a way?!? I’m older now, happens to the best of us, and I have more friends than I ever did before. I don’t think I’m as close to people as some people get but that’s OK. So I still live a lot in my head. I have a huge fantasy life and my head is full of voices, in a good way. I have a mousepad on my desk at work that says “I do what the voices in my head tell me to.” And in the main that’s very true, especially when I write. That’s when it’s best to do exactly that. I get inspiration from somewhere and I spew the words out on the page. In truth I’m not sure where these words come from. It’s a mystery to me where even the words I am typing now originate. There is apparently part of the brain that just dredges up all kind of crap from some kind of primordial ooze full of letters and slaps them together to form words. I guess it’s very primitive. Some folks believe that life was formed just like that. There was a dark rich pool full of letters and these combined in some ways to make amino acids and DNA and the proteins that form life. Whether that’s true or not, writing is kind of like that for me. Now of course we come back later and impose grammar and structure on the things that we right. At least some time. Some of my best poetry is a dipper full of ooze poured on the page. It’s best if I don’t touch it and I just let it form into a life of its own. This writing exercise is a lot like that. I do correct for spelling errors as I go but that’s about it. The process of writing or even just thinking amazes me. I think it was Hobbes (the tiger not the philosopher though he’s a bit of both) who said he liked it when he was looking at the sky and thinking and looking and thinking and then he wakes up. Sometimes I just let my brain spin like that and then all of the sudden I let out the clutch and step on the gas and an idea comes and goes on the paper and I have no idea where that idea came from. It may be a snatch of conversation or something I see on TV. It might be from a book or aliens may be zapping it into my brain from planet Thoron Zeta. I even think some of it comes from the being which my brain labels as God. I hope that doesn’t seem too presumptuous. But if it is, oh well I guess you can sod off. Well that’s it for now. Why do you write?
Why do I write?
Ever since I was a wee lad I’ve always wanted to do everything. I wanted to be an astronaut/fireman/jet pilot/scuba diver/archaeologist/herpetologist/astronomer/magician/comedian. I also loved to write. It has recently come to me that writing is my way to be all of these things. I can have a character that is any number of these or many characters. I also have strong opinions on food, movies, computers, beer, religion, and a whole host of other things. I was watching Food TV last night and there is a woman whose job it is to go around to various places and see if she can EAT AT RESTAURANTS for less than forty dollars in a day. This is a job for which she is getting paid!!! There are people that write books along the same lines. How could you not love that? I write because I love to write and now I just need to find someone wiling to pay me enough to support my family. I guess that’s the quandary, for most writers, is getting the door open a crack. It’s one of those Catch-22’s, you need experience to get hired and you need to get hired to get experience. So I have started to write more daily, even little stream of consciousness things like this to get my writing muscles back into shape and I hope to find some freelance writing gigs. I don’t know how to precisely go about doing that but I am making some inroads thanks to some friends. I guess not knowing never stopped me from pursuing a job in computers and I’m doing OK for myself money-wise.
I’ve kind of lived my whole life locked inside my head. I didn’t have a whole lot of friends growing up so I would create these universes in my head and populate them with all kinds of strange and wonderful creatures. I wish I had some of that stuff now but I guess the ideas I have now use those old ideas as a kind if compost. My ideas now are richer and darker than the old ones. So I guess most writers really are shit heads in a way?!? I’m older now, happens to the best of us, and I have more friends than I ever did before. I don’t think I’m as close to people as some people get but that’s OK. So I still live a lot in my head. I have a huge fantasy life and my head is full of voices, in a good way. I have a mousepad on my desk at work that says “I do what the voices in my head tell me to.” And in the main that’s very true, especially when I write. That’s when it’s best to do exactly that. I get inspiration from somewhere and I spew the words out on the page. In truth I’m not sure where these words come from. It’s a mystery to me where even the words I am typing now originate. There is apparently part of the brain that just dredges up all kind of crap from some kind of primordial ooze full of letters and slaps them together to form words. I guess it’s very primitive. Some folks believe that life was formed just like that. There was a dark rich pool full of letters and these combined in some ways to make amino acids and DNA and the proteins that form life. Whether that’s true or not, writing is kind of like that for me. Now of course we come back later and impose grammar and structure on the things that we right. At least some time. Some of my best poetry is a dipper full of ooze poured on the page. It’s best if I don’t touch it and I just let it form into a life of its own. This writing exercise is a lot like that. I do correct for spelling errors as I go but that’s about it. The process of writing or even just thinking amazes me. I think it was Hobbes (the tiger not the philosopher though he’s a bit of both) who said he liked it when he was looking at the sky and thinking and looking and thinking and then he wakes up. Sometimes I just let my brain spin like that and then all of the sudden I let out the clutch and step on the gas and an idea comes and goes on the paper and I have no idea where that idea came from. It may be a snatch of conversation or something I see on TV. It might be from a book or aliens may be zapping it into my brain from planet Thoron Zeta. I even think some of it comes from the being which my brain labels as God. I hope that doesn’t seem too presumptuous. But if it is, oh well I guess you can sod off. Well that’s it for now. Why do you write?