I Have Decided to Give Up Writing.

As the subject line says, I have decided to give up writing.  

I do not have the discipline or the desire to work on a single line of dialogue day to day.  

Whenever I see a video about writing craft on YouTube, I do not watch it.  I think it’s because I feel ashamed about not writing for large gaps of time.

My day begins with watching what is called a “livestream” on Youtube.  It is about stream of consciousness nonsense that I watch passively.  I then watch something on Netflix and take a nap afterwards.  Then I walk to a small town to drink a cappuccino at the local pizza shop. After that, I take the bus home.  I don’t scribble a single line, not one letter, not even a keystroke.

I dedicated myself to making one entry per day on my blog.  It has been countless weeks since I have done that.  The blog has been inert since January.

I recently watched a video about an author named George RR Martin.  He is famous for writing the Game of Thrones series.  It is a projected seven volume book series and he had finished the first five books.  It has been ten years to date since he has published a book in this series and many of his fans are losing faith that he’ll ever complete it.  He is very old and overweight and he may die sooner than later.

I tch tched his work ethic.  Then I realized that this “slacker” has published FIVE volumes of his A Song of Ice and Fire (ASOIAF) series.  That’s five more books than I have published. That is not including the ancillary books connected with ASOIAF and the many television projects he is involved in.

I have taken one screenwriting class after the other and then sat on my script for weeks, even months.  I learned techniques to facilitate the writing process.  I have employed none of them.

In addition to this I opened accounts on Instagram and DeviantArt to showcase artwork I have produced over a stretch of thirty years.  Does that sound impressive?  It isn’t.  Most of my “artwork” are doodlings on post it notes.  Other works are incomplete.  All these works are a testament to my fear of completing a project.

 Seriously, would you call this art?

As a kid, my father tried to teach me how to pitch a baseball.  He said I had to work on my follow through.  I never got the hang of it.  It shows in a lot of my efforts.  It shows most of all in the writing I have produced.

So what you read is my last entry.  I don’t know what I am going to do with my time.  More aimless walks and more cappuccinos, I suppose.  Maybe even some record collecting.  I’ll have to figure out what to do with my life without a creative outlet.

Anyway, this is it.  I’m done.

- JJB