Writing for me

I really want to be a writer.  That’s what I want my career to be.  That’s what I want myself to be.  I have so much that I feel the need to say.  It’s not all world-changingly important, but I just have this need to get it into the world anyway.  When I look at writers that succeed nowadays, all I can think is that none of them are really doing what I want to be doing.  The most popular modern writers are writing YA novels that can be easily adapted into blockbusters.  I have an enormous amount of respect for writers like this.  I have an enormous amount of respect for their writing.  A lot of the kind of books I’ve described are what got me into reading and ultimately into writing, but they just aren’t the kind of writing that I personally want to make.

What scares me is that I feel like there are writers like me already out there.  The problem is that they aren’t big names.  It’s not that I want fame, but it’s necessary.  I want to reach a wide audience, and fame would be part of doing that.  I don’t feel like I’d be breaking any mold with my writing in a way that it would reach a really wide audience like I’d like to.

I honestly don’t understand why I want many people to read my work.  I think it might be because I’m afraid of being forgotten.  I think about death a lot.  Honestly, it’s been bothering me a lot less lately.  I don’t want to die, but I’m more accepting of the fact that I will die.  I’ve kind of accepted the fact that I’ll eventually be forgotten.  The thought of being forgotten has always come with this imagery of being blown away by wind as a million specks of dust and separated out into the universe.  It used to make me cringe, but it’s almost comforting now.  The thought of not having the pressure of being an individual but being a part of a greater collective is nice in a lot of ways.

As I think about it, that seems kind of like how cults happen.  Everyone wants to feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves.  Nothingness comes with isolation, but community creates an idea of something.  It can never deliver that something because it would always disappoint.  The idea of something is enough to satiate that desire.

I was worried that I would be struggling to hit 400 words for this to be a blog, but as soon as I started writing about death, the words just flowed out of me.  I think these feelings have been weighing on me for a while now, but I’m just now acknowledging them.  It wasn’t intentional; I didn’t realize they were there.  They worked their way out on their own.

This blog has taken a shift from when I started writing it.  I’ll probably change the title.   When I started writing it, I was really pissed at myself because I knew exactly what this blog would be.  It would just be me bitching about how I was afraid I wouldn’t be a successful writer, and I’m sure that the first half is.  The thing is, I felt no inspiration to write when I started this, so I just went with the first that popped into my head, and something else came out of it.  I don’t know if this is good, but it’s good for me.  I’m glad that writing gives me opportunities to work out feelings like this.  To circle back around to the original, unoriginal topic, I guess it doesn’t really matter who my writing reaches if I just allow it to reach into me.

Author: Jackson Palmer

Jackson Palmer is a student studying literature at the Mississippi School of the Arts. He hopes to use the education he obtains there to write novels, short stories, poetry, and scripts for movies, television, and theater productions. Additionally, he would like to write within a number of genres such as comedy, drama, horror, etc. Some of his favorite writers and influences include Billy Joel, John Steinbeck, and Dan Harmon. He hopes to explore concepts and systems of thought such as existentialism, nihilism, and fulfillment within his writing. He would like to thank you visiting his blog and hopefully reading his work. View all posts by Jackson Palmer