![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writer's want
May. 14th, 2008 09:39 pmIf there is such a thing, I've got it. I want to write. The catch is that, while I want to write about something, I've nothing really to write about. In my journal I observe, complain, brain-dump, share, excoriate, babble and ramble on about a lot of nothing. I'm not a story teller nor am I anywhere creative enough to be a story creator, so fiction is right out. But I'm not an expert or even near-expert on anything that I could drone on about in a non-fiction work.
Sure, I have the odd idea or three. I collect observations and occasionally manage to find connections that weren't necessarily obvious. I have stumbled over my fair share of insight on Life and How It Works (or Doesn't, as the case may be), but there's nothing earth-shattering in any of that, and, undoubtedly, nothing truly unique. Not that I think uniqueness is a requirement for decent non-fiction, but it certainly makes for a great selling point.
It would be grand to make a living by writing. I'm sure 'most every professional writer thinks so too, and most of them are probably still waiting to find out if that is true. So even if I found my Muse tomorrow (or, more likely, captured, kidnapped, and furiously negotiated her release in exchange for marketable inspiration), so what?
I'm sure the majority of professional writers of non-fiction started out as student writers doing their Master's and perhaps later, Doctoral thesis. Not having gone down that road, and not having it as a viable option at the moment, I've been attempting to make do with ad hoc research, half-assed hypotheses, and semi-copious reading on random subjects. I've dabbled with law, philosophy, and numismatics. I've liked most of the subjects, eagerly thrown myself into the reading and the research, and enjoyed to one degree or another the writing and what there has been of the doing of it all.
What I have to show for it is a house trailer full of books, magazines, papers, coins, exonumia, and other stuff. And a computer full of PDFs of other people's research papers, text files of stuff I've written, and multiple bookmark files with links to even more studies, research, sources for sources, and more.
Ultimately I have found that what I am really good at is gathering, collecting, sorting, classifying, and analyzing. Which, of course, is mostly what I've been doing for a living in one way or another with computers for 21 years now. I used to think I could retire and be a part-time coin dealer, but the last year of parting-out my collection for rent money has just about burnt me out. Plus it's a high-risk, low-margin business, so writing is probably a safer bet.
So until I settle on a topic, I'm going to continue to write a lot of nothing here to keep it flowing, to build-up a habit of it, and maybe figure it out.
Sure, I have the odd idea or three. I collect observations and occasionally manage to find connections that weren't necessarily obvious. I have stumbled over my fair share of insight on Life and How It Works (or Doesn't, as the case may be), but there's nothing earth-shattering in any of that, and, undoubtedly, nothing truly unique. Not that I think uniqueness is a requirement for decent non-fiction, but it certainly makes for a great selling point.
It would be grand to make a living by writing. I'm sure 'most every professional writer thinks so too, and most of them are probably still waiting to find out if that is true. So even if I found my Muse tomorrow (or, more likely, captured, kidnapped, and furiously negotiated her release in exchange for marketable inspiration), so what?
I'm sure the majority of professional writers of non-fiction started out as student writers doing their Master's and perhaps later, Doctoral thesis. Not having gone down that road, and not having it as a viable option at the moment, I've been attempting to make do with ad hoc research, half-assed hypotheses, and semi-copious reading on random subjects. I've dabbled with law, philosophy, and numismatics. I've liked most of the subjects, eagerly thrown myself into the reading and the research, and enjoyed to one degree or another the writing and what there has been of the doing of it all.
What I have to show for it is a house trailer full of books, magazines, papers, coins, exonumia, and other stuff. And a computer full of PDFs of other people's research papers, text files of stuff I've written, and multiple bookmark files with links to even more studies, research, sources for sources, and more.
Ultimately I have found that what I am really good at is gathering, collecting, sorting, classifying, and analyzing. Which, of course, is mostly what I've been doing for a living in one way or another with computers for 21 years now. I used to think I could retire and be a part-time coin dealer, but the last year of parting-out my collection for rent money has just about burnt me out. Plus it's a high-risk, low-margin business, so writing is probably a safer bet.
So until I settle on a topic, I'm going to continue to write a lot of nothing here to keep it flowing, to build-up a habit of it, and maybe figure it out.
