Writing #1

This is a "ramble" blog post, it's sort of like a public journal with less structured and more experimental (read: bad) writing. Don't take it too seriously.

My bars are low, almost completely drained. But here I am, back again for more. Doing exactly what I do everyday. Typing words on my computer.

I’m a programmer by day, a writer by night. I’m a much better programmer than I am a writer. If you’ve ever worked with me, you may or may not disagree. I would love to live in a world where writing was my job and programming was my hobby. Writing well consistently is challenging for me and that’s what I love and hate about it. From what I’ve heard (and read), it seems like this is a feeling shared by a lot of other writers.

Writing sometimes feels like torture you’re doing to yourself. Tearing words from deep within you, throwing them up, and finally cleaning up the mess you’ve made. The truth hurts, but the truth is what good writing is made of. Everyone says “Write what you know”, and I’m inclined to believe them given my rare experiences with the production of OK writing.

When I manage to “write what I know”, it usually turns out pretty good. Problem is, is that I feel like I don’t know much…

Video games have been a lifelong passion of mine, so I know a lot about them and so I’ve spent a lot of time writing about them. Writing about video games is tough because it is a visual medium. Talking about video games without showing them off is not ideal, and video editing is a real pain in my ass.

I would like to write about something else, I just don’t know what that “something else” is yet. I’ve spent the past few months, unsuccessfully, trying to figure that out.

Book essays/reviews

I’ve been reading a lot recently and I’m making a conscious effort to retain as much of what I read as possible. This theoretically would make it easier for me to write reviews for the books I read. But I’ve yet to try.

Movie essays/reviews

I organize a weekly movie screening and so I end up watching quite a few movies. Sometimes I like tackling a movie from different angles and trying to understand what it’s trying to do. For example, I watched Johnny Mnemonic, I thought it was stupid and fun. As the days went by, I started thinking that it was an unironically good exploration of the plight of the middle class white man? I’ve got a dozen or so pages of notes on that topic that I might be able to turn into an essay but I haven’t done that yet.

Weird topics

TikTok is an extremely efficient softcore pornography delivery system and that’s something people would be interested in reading about (I think). The app was sold to me as some kind funny short video feed but in my first half hour of using the app a few months ago, I didn’t see many funny videos (unless you find almost naked women “dancing”, breastfeeding or just posing for the camera to be “funny”). Shortly after, I uninstalled the app. Recently, FOR SCIENCE, I’ve dived deep into this pornhole in hopes of writing something interesting about it… We’ll see.

I can string two words together not too badly but writing something down that other people are compelled to read is difficult. No matter what I write about, I need to tell story. I need to hook people and keep them excited about whatever comes next. I don’t think I did that here but I don’t care.

Goodbye.

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