Shit and Gold

I've earned many jobs by lying about my past experience. I was hired as a gardener, bartender, and camp counselor based upon fabrications. I had no qualms about doing it because I wanted the jobs and knew I could do them. And I did them!

Before my first bartending shift, when I was twenty-two, I studied several handbooks and had my stepfather show me how to shake drinks in a mixer and how to pour beer from a tap (he was a bartender, also). Nobody ever suspected me.

But when it comes to writing, where does that confidence go? I've been thinking that I should try a little experiment. I should bluff my way into being a writer, just like I did with those other jobs, and just pretend I am one. Just start doing the work with all the false confidence I can muster. Who's gonna know? Besides me?

I wasn't afraid I'd fail at those jobs. I knew I could do them. I knew I could mix drinks and keep them flowing, knew I could carry large bags of dirt and prune delicate exotics, knew I could steer a large group of children and keep them safe. But I don't know that I can write something other people will want to read. Something that is smart, entertaining, worthwhile, new, and important all at once. How do I do that? Perhaps that's the biggest difference between myself and "real" writers. They don't wonder how to do it.

When I was eighteen, I had this glorious few months where I did almost nothing but write poetry and draw comics. I'd dropped out of college the day before classes began and moved myself from New York City to Portland, Oregon. I rented a small apartment with my sister, got a waitressing job at a doomed restaurant, and spent most of my non-working hours in front of an old typewriter at my kitchen table. I was prolific! I'd write for five to ten hours at a stretch. I have no idea where it came from, that inspiration and willingness to spend all my free time typing out lines that would never... I was about to write, "would never amount to anything", but that's not true. They made me a better writer.

I've long believed that when one begins on the path of the artist, they produce 100% shit. After a time, if they stick with it, they'll start to produce 5% gold and 95% shit. Gradually the percentages will change, until one day the artist might be producing equal amounts shit and gold. But you have to make the shit to get to the gold. There is no other way.

Perfectionists like me are too afraid to produce shit, so I will never get to the gold. If you can't write, lower your standards.

(photo of jack kerouac)