Grace Notes @ Snarkattack

Read more cool stuff on Neil Gaiman’s blog (where else, really?). When I read this, I thought especially of M. Then I thought of M, me and that dratted bottle of whisky by my bedside.

Writers are people who write. By and large, they are not happy people. They’re not good at relationships. Often they’re drunks. And writing — good writing — does not get easier and easier with practice. It gets harder and harder — so eventually the writer must stall out into silence.The silence that waits for every writer and that, inevitably, if only with death (if we’re lucky the two may happen at the same time: but they are still two, and their coincidence is rare), the writer must fall into is angst-ridden and terrifying - and often drives us mad. (In a letter to Allen Tate, the poet Hart Crane once described writing as “dancing on dynamite.”) So if you’re not a writer, consider yourself fortunate.

The quote is taken from Samuel R. Delany’s About Writing. I think I may need to read it.

(*whispers* are we really not happy people? If I’m only a would-be writer, then is my unhappiness ‘Diet Coke’ unhappiness?)

I read a very, very, very long Kenneth Koch poem today the other day - ‘To Marina’ - I absolutely hated it at first, but grew to like some of it. I still overall dislike it, it seems too…indulgent. Is something wrong with me that I don’t like it? I know M would say not at all but still…

Found it on a LiveJournal poetry community.