I had one of those days where you had everything that you write, then it turned into one of those weeks. Okay, its actually still on going. I write a page and I hate it, I write a sentence and I go say “what idiot wrote this?”
Me. I wrote it.
It feels thin, without any body or substance, kind of like diet coke. You ever gotten it by mistake and had that disappointment? Where you were expecting something full octane like a Cuba Libre, not just a run and coke, a rum and coke with lime. On a beach. Instead you get a thin approximation of a coke.
Once upon a time I was working on a construction site in the Dominican Republic and like any construction job, you’re working sun up to sun down. Long days, short nights, lots of physical labor, it was exactly what I needed at that point of my life. Where we were staying had these amazing cuba libres, they didn’t use coke. they made their own cola. I didn’t even know you could do that! That was a drink with style.
That difference is kind of like where I am with my writing at the moment. There are so many ways to say anything and its dizzying to think of what creatives actually do. We make things out of thin air. Stephen King describes it as building a camp fire and seeing who shows up out of the woods but its still making a painting or what have you when nothing was there before.
Makes me think of a book but Raymond Queneau, he’s a French writer that is famous for his “Exercises in Style”. He wrote a quick couple paragraph ditty about a man that he sees on the bus. Then he writes it 94 different times! Different styles, different words every time. No diet coke there.
What I’m getting at is that with style and persistence we can get past our diet coke stage in anything. My rough drafts are rough, like a diet coke, and I have to keep working at it to make it free Cuba.
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