Why We Need to Create Shit

It’s been a good long while since I’ve published a novel. People keep telling me I’m still a writer, even if I don’t write. But it doesn’t feel like I’m a writer, at least not in the way that I always expected myself to be a writer. I don’t have deadlines anymore. I’m not sending off manuscripts to publishers in order to get a contact. I’m not trying to make a living. I don’t maintain social media in order to keep my “audience” engaged.

In a way, it has been a gift. I’ve discovered, for one thing, that I still write books. Fiction. Novels, mostly, not short stories. I write for myself primarily. Yes, I use fiction at times to help me understand the world. I also write essays for that purpose. But primarily my fiction has become pure play. I don’t have pressure on me for it to be “good” anymore. It doesn’t have to be suited to anyone but myself. I might once have said that this is a good fallow period for me to “level up” or some shit like that. But actually, I don’t think it matters whether I become a better writer, with more skill or more depth or more breadth. That is not the point. It has never been the point of me writing.

The point of me writing is to play. Not to have fun. Not to enjoy myself. It isn’t fun. It isn’t enjoyable. It isn’t relaxing, at least not in the way that other people choose hobbies to be relaxing. (I do have other hobbies and they don’t have the same mental/emotional space that writing does). Writing is “zen” for me in a way that nothing else is. That is, it transports me out of this world and into a different, out of myself and into another person’s point of view. Nothing else can make me feel relief and freedom like that. But it isn’t just relief or freedom, either.

It is play in the way that children pretending is play. It is play because it is just for me and can be as shitty as it will be when it first comes out. I don’t have to shape it (although I can if I want). It is a space for me to make mistakes and to be a bad human. It is a space for me to try to be a better human. It is a space for me to not have to perform some version of myself for others. It is a space for me to try out this or that to see how it turns out for this character.

I had taught myself to do “outlines” for novels, and I will say that while I found some satisfaction in learning that skill, outlining novels on proposal isn’t play in the same way. There’s not the same risk. That’s the point of outlining, so people can tell you how to change it before you play with it and see where it goes. That’s the gloriousness of this kind of play for me now. My books can be a train wreck. They can be absolute shit. I can combine genres as much as I want. I can have unhappy endings. I can be sentimental as fuck. I can dance naked or in a giant’s costume. I can create shit.

Shit is beautiful. This idea that I was fed as a growing child that “art” is something special, that “artists” are doing something different than other people were doing—that is shit. Fuck that. That just messed me up and made me carry a weight I was never supposed to carry. Artists aren’t supposed to be thinking about a legacy or what other people juduge their works to do well or not well. No. That is the job of a critic and I’m not a critic. You can have that job if you want. I won’t argue for or against that job. But it isn’t mine.

My job is to create shit. It’s to create things that please me and things that disgust me and things that are real to me. Just to create. Not to judge. The minute I judge, the minute it stops being play. And when I stop playing, then I’m not me anymore. I’m not a child playing with shit. I’m doing work. That’s not what my art is for. It’s serious, but also very very not serious. I have no idea if I will ever publish anything again, and that isn’t what matters. My art belongs to me again in a weird way, and that is a good thing.