Thursday, August 9, 2007

dumb dumb dumb child

i am feeling bad about the pursuit of writing
i am feeling like i am wasting a lot of my time
i put roughly 5-8 hours a day 5-6 days a week into it
and i think about it probably 68% of my waking hours not including the time spent thinking which causes loss of sleep
and the bursts of pleasure i receive in my head from the writing
and the occasional acceptance of work
and the fine people i've met or e-met as a result
are often in the short run worth it
but i don't have a job
and i don't have income more than the money i make from the record label i half-assedly produce
and i procrastinate as much as i produce by activities such as writing negative-minded blogs
and i have a new mortgage which needs to be paid for and each hour i write
is another hour i am not making money to pay my mortgage and thus decreasing
the money i've managed to save over the past few years
and today i feel like shit.
i feel like shit about a lot of things but right this minute that seems most pressing.
i still can't bring myself to read very much.
mostly i've been reading books that are very short and have small sections so that i can dip out whenever i want to and maybe come back in a few days or a week even and maybe not even remember what was happening.
i read yannick murphy's new collection IN A BEAR'S EYE straight through in about 90 minutes the other day and really liked it.
i read robert lopez's novel PART OF THE WORLD a couple weeks ago pretty much straight through and really liked it.
and i've actually been more prolific with short pieces in the past two months than i've been in a really long time since i've taken a break trying to work on my novel, which i realized will now be the 5.5th novel i've completed some form of draft of, none of which has been done anything with except shown to a handful of editors.
perhaps i am lazy or half-assed.
sometimes i go back and read the things i wrote and thought highly of and just want to cringe and delete them and send emails to the editors i sent them out to and apologize for sending them something so worthless and maybe try to focus my thinking energy into wiping that impression out of their mind even though they probably don't remember me from any of the several thousand others they read every month or year.
i think the presence of a submissions tracking device like the one at duotrope.com is an excellent tool but also causes some amount of stress or nervousness in me.
i think too much about what's where and who and when and how long and what does it matter.
my duotrope says i have a 14.56% acceptance ratio which is higher than the average but i also do not report everything so it's probably much lower.
which doesn't even matter really because having any acceptance at all is pleasant but for some reason i keep thinking about it.
i don't know why i am writing this because most of the time i feel like i am beginning to accomplish something and beginning to write things that are actually publishable and worthwhile to some extent but a lot of the times i just feel like shit.
i will feel better in another minute but i think i need to go run a couple miles and hope that tonight my brain lets me sleep.

8 comments:

Tao Lin said...

edit your 5.5 novels into long short stories and then you will have a really story-collection probably

Tao Lin said...

this is a good poem, if you want email it to me to publish on 3 a.m.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

i appreciate tao lin.

trevor said...

I like posts like these about writing on a personal level. i'm in the exact opposite situation: little published and wanting eagerly to "get my name out," as perverse as that may sound to some. and the themes and content of my stories puts a lot of people off so it's that much harder. and I work too much and am still struggling through college. I wish I had more time to write. i'm reading Lunar Park and it is like this post, about Ellis' writing on a personal level. I heard it wasn't a very good book but I like it so far. i'd like to read some of the longer stories you've written blake.

trevor said...

sorry i was only in chapter 2 or 3 when i posted the previous comment. now it seems that Lunar Park is "faction" (fiction based on facts)

still good so far. crazy. creepy.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

hm. never had been a big fan of ellis but could be interesting to see him writing about writing. maybe i'll peek. i have some longer stories coming out soon.
thank you trevor

Kathryn said...

i work full-time and i still usually feel like shit. you probably don't need to work full-time.

also i like your writing. your time is probably better spent writing.

BLAKE BUTLER said...

thank you kathy. that made me feel a bit better somehow.