Bad Eyes & Writers

7/7/20262 min read

My eyes are done for. Three days straight just writing and writing on the computer and my phone. Add that to ten hour shifts doing remote tech support. I always forget how much anything can take a toll on me if I do it too much. I've always been a -100% to 110% kind of person, and it's beginning to catch up to me. Gone are the days of my youth. Gone are the days of my youth! I can't survive doing nothing and I can't surive doing it all.

I've been listening to some interviews of writers and it's been very very sobering in the most romantic and poetic way. I've always seen writing as a way to express my thoughts in a way that I never could verbally. It's like dancing. You could try to say what it means, but to put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard) and to write it out is a catharsis and art in itself. I personally never could feel that release when speaking.

Anne Lammot reminds me that writing is like driving through the fog sometimes. You only can really see what's in front of you, but you keep driving and driving and eventually you get there. When I heard her say that I felt relief. The pressure of time, perfection, and being an all-knowing-all-planning artist is released.

Ocean Vuong says something along the lines of, Has our species seen this before? It's a simple and thought-provoking mark by which he measures original thought and good writing by. Good writing makes us see and re-see things by a different light. When read, it gives us the sensation of seeing. The moments in between that have no descriptors or names yet. The same scene painted in a different hue or at the pace of a snail. It's amazing the biographic traces you can find in somebody's sentences. That is the light.

I've been learning to write in AP Style, a Journalism standard. I feel proud. I've been able to minimize my sentence lengths. I can get straight to the point. I have a tendency of narrating long sentences, wanting to jam every bit of detail within, but it's exciting to see my sentences changes. The cadence is more varied. I like it!

I'm reminded that I shouldn't lose my voice.

And on the topic of originality and voice in a world of AI: I just had to end with this...
When asked why he wouldn't use AI to write, Yann Martel's says, "Because why would I? It would be like hiring someone to have sex for you. You know, I love writing. I love the materiality of it."

Big thank you to David Perell - YouTube for hosting these writer interviews!

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