Gifted Slacker

From Bill Lawrence’s “Why I Write” essay:

Why do I write? As an acknowledged bullshitter, I thought I’d start with some of the lies writers tell. I don’t write because I couldn’t do anything else. I’m a bright guy, I could hold down a number of jobs. I could run a hat shop. I don’t love writing. Nobody does – it’s worse than fishing. Anyone that tells you that he loves to write has either never written anything, or, is in fact, an alien. Throw water in his face, if he is human he’ll get embarrassed and admit he’s never written. If he’s an alien, the water will burn his skin and kill him like in the Mel Gibson movie SIGNS.

Way back when, in the days I got creative writing assignments in school, I loved to write. Howver, I’ve never written anything of substance. I’ve always wanted to try, but I always get caught up in putting each word down in its perfect place.

I recently gave up trying. But Iris Yamashita’s “Why I Write” essay has just about convinced me to give it a go again:

By the time I got to college, however, my Asian practicality and no-nonsense parents brought me back to my childhood philosophy that choosing a life of a writer was choosing the life of a pauper. To make a long story short, I took a long, circuitous route of a career in engineering and web programming and tortuous beginnings of novels that were never completed before I ventured into the medium of the screenplay.

So, I’ll give it a go again. Maybe not right now, but someday. Someday.