Why I can never properly finish writing a novel

Once a day, for two fucking seconds, I get the notion I am the next Hemingway. I’d open up a Microsoft Word document, type out some literary shit, and smirk. Then I’d check the word count (27 Words) and then give up my dream of becoming Hemingway because generally, a book has about 80 000 words, which means while I can come up with 27 smart words in two seconds, I would have to spend the next twenty years of my life thinking about the rest of the 79 973 intelligent words I have to string together to become the Poe and the Fitzgerald and the Hesse of our generation.

It isn’t that I don’t like to write and make up characters and storylines, because I do. I love them; they’re all I’ve done ever since I was a little girl. I’d come home from a walk by a pond, and tell my aunt that I almost got bitten by a crocodile. Back then, they were called LIES TOLD BY AN IMAGINATIVE FIVE-YEARS-OLD. Now that I am older, of course, I get to be all fancy and call my lies ‘novels’. Which I have never finished. I’ve gotten the starting, and the middle, and the ending all planned out. I’ve written up to 60 000 words for some. Heck, I’ve gotten up to 100 000 words for some. But they’re all bullshit words. They lack humor, or literary value or commercial value. Sometimes, I’d even send them out to agents, just to see if anyone out there is stupid enough to buy my lies. Apparently, however, I am still as a good a storyteller as I was fifteen years ago. i.e, I STILL SUCK.

I’d get bored of my own story (which is not a good sign if you were wondering). Sometimes I feel like I’m the worst piece of shitty dreamer out there, that a bearded man high on crack with a pipe in his mouth and bits of poop still clinging to his butt (because he has arthritis and can’t stretch that far back when he has to wipe his ba-ding-ding) can write better than I do. Maybe he can. Maybe that old man is the next Hemingway and not me. Not me, with my weird humor and bad hair decisions, not me with my stupid internet addiction and depression issues, not me with my stupid half grown bangs and 10 pounds overweight body.

I feel like I should have given up by now. Just pack it up and go home. Spend my weekends drinking cheap beer out of cartons, watching re-runs of New Girl, and never attempt anything again. After all, if I don’t try, at least I won’t know that I can’t do it, right? I can just look at Stephenie Meyer and be all, POOH! I CAN THINK OF HOT VAMPIRES TOO! or Veronica Roth and yell, HEY! I CAN COME OUT WITH FACTIONS TOO, IF I WANT TO! I can just grow up old and bat shit crazy and be average. Forever.

Or I can still try. And cry every time I fail and whine to y’all about it. But still try. And keep doing it until I succeed or die. Whichever come first.

(I’M KEEPING MY FINGERS CROSSED THAT IT WILL BE SUCCESS, OF COURSE, BECAUSE DYING WOULD JUST BE AWKWARD AFTER THIS EPIC POST.)

Have a good week, y’all! xx

E.

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