A Brief Poem About a Writer Who Doesn't Write—Revisited
The truth is that my confidence and desire to get up each morning to be a decent person and succeed is directly related to how often I publish a piece of writing. Bylines are my inspiration. Here on this blog, in a magazine. Churning out a screenplay, teleplay, or stage play manuscript that could be, at least, read by a table of actors. A book. These are the things that connect me to the performative identity I’ve clung to and has clung to me for the past twenty some odd years. When I don’t write, I feel weak. As Superman might if he spent too much time in Chicago’s winters where the yellow sun is rarely seen. I’m not Superman, of course. I’m not even Hunter Thompson or Sylvia Plath or David Foster Wallace. When I don’t write, I barely feel like David Himmel—a writer.
They say—they being creative writing professors, esteemed novelists, and hacks with wordy Instagram posts alike—that writers write. Not necessarily for any specific goal, but because writers have to write. And I agree. Like I just said, if I’m not writing, I’m not my best self. But I disagree that writers who write but don’t publish routinely, even on indie blogs such as this one, are the same kind of writers as those who have bylines and back catalogues and books for sale on Amazon or at the local book shop. Writers who get their shit out there—not all of it, but enough of it—are the real writers. True warriors of the pen and keys.
I’m no longer active on social media, but one of my greatest annoyances when I was engaged with that uncomfortably scratchy part of the human experience was seeing writers post about writing with a carefully constructed photo of their writing space. A cup of tea, a brand new Moleskin notebook, freshly sharpened pencils and uncapped pens ready to dive in and do the work against a background of color-coordinated books. It’s all so perfect. A yellow legal pad with AirPods bookending the space in your head that is so deep in thought. “Here I go! I’m ready to write a story!” the post would say with far more words and way too much effort. Look, if you want everyone to know you’re writing, stop playing art director and write. We’ll know you wrote something when we see it in our feed or on the bookshelf at that local shop that sells cute enamel pins of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Edgar Allan Poe.
In the time it took to stage that photograph, you could have banged out five hundred words. That’s not a writer. That’s a Golden Globe award-winning performance in hackery.
Unless being a hack is part of your warm up process. Maybe…
The point is this: Less talk, more writing.
And now, four hundred and fifty-four words later, I present to you this short little poem. I hope you find it as inspiring as I was by publishing it.
✶
The One Hit Wonder Writer
He wasn’t a good writer
But he played the part well.
His suicide note was his most elaborate prose to date
And was the only thing he ever published.
