soopastryheart

Writing is hard. And stupid. And everything you write is probably stupid too. But you do it anyway, just in case a tiny paragraph in a book resonates, even in the most microscopic amounts, with a struggling writer who spends her days with her forehead on her desk hoping for her writing to stop sucking.

“Unfortunately my brain made its usual pilgrimage to the mysterious land where language dies. My imagination was impenetrably dark, boarded up. The ideas remained inexpressible, penumbral. I had linguistic thrombosis, my textual flow impeded by the narrowing of some creative vessel. I sat simpering at the desk, and thought: You fucker, you failed to cannibalize drug deals, corruption, murdered nurses, domestic disputes, drowned children, hit-and-runs, and now you can’t even fashion a decent story out of your wife’s sadism. You’re done. I poured 330 milliliters of Heineken on the keyboard until the screen went green. I had been dodging success with drone-like precision for nearly two decades. That’s it, I concluded. It’s finished. Seems persistence wasn’t the key after all.” 

– excerpt from Quicksand by Steve Toltz, the second book from the author of my favorite book of all-time, A Fraction of the Whole.