Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson take notice. Okay, they are probably horrible choices for iconic literary figures, since they both took their own lives. No one should do that. But they were brilliant. And brilliance should shine. It's perhaps a tormented place, where great ideas and creative words form and become something too large to contain, but the people who choose that journey bring awe and wonder to the rest of us.@brandt, I don't know what to say except that I was captivated by every word you wrote in this post. You have an awesome sense of humor, a wonderful wit, a great way with irony, and a command of the English language that would make both
... said from one tormented writer to another. I grew up in a world of words with academic parents, discovered a love of writing and became obsessed with how to use this gift.
And then, after much pondering and soul searching, I decided I didn't want to live the life of a suffering writer. I wanted more certainty in my life. Decades of technical and marketing writing later, I'm glad I made the choice. It was the right one for me. There was a fork in the road where I knew I had two options — one being solitude, writing, a lot of coffee and wine, and a regular job as a bartender, and the other being marriage, family, career, a home, and money to live life the way I want while also working on my creative writing — and I chose the latter: stability. But I admire people immensely who make the choice not to sell their souls. That's a bit dramatic, yet true. We all have to make choices. Once we make those choices, the rest tends to fall in place to support them.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, and I'm glad you enjoyed reading that giant block of text up there. I'm so over marketing copy that if someone tells me I should make my writing more "scannable" or run it through some fucking web app to make it more "readable" then I will purposely submit copy with long complex paragraphs and run-on sentences, followed by my resignation letter. It sounds like you made the reasonable decision to focus on stability, and I admire that. If I could find that it would be ideal. However I have yet to discover a job that doesn't make me want to drive into oncoming traffic every day on my way to work, and freelance writing at least gives me the flexibility to move around and be mobile which is key to not going insane. Have you ever seen the movie Falling Down with Michael Douglas? That's probably going to be me someday. Don't tell anyone.
!PIZZA