on this harvest moon

I don't need AI to write. I can create fake scenarios in my head perfectly fine myself.

I don't need AI to write. I can create fake scenarios in my head perfectly fine myself.

Writers have two modes and they are "i haven't written in three weeks and i am rotting from the inside and everything feels wrong and i don't know who i am anymore" and "i wrote for four hours straight and forgot to eat and it's dark outside and when did that happen and i feel like a god" and there is nothing in between. no chill. no medium setting. just famine or feast and a very confused nervous system.

Writer confidence is not a thing you build and then have. It's a thing you have for about eleven minutes after writing something good and then it evaporates and you have to make more. There is no reservoir. There is no saving it up. You produce it fresh each time from scratch like some kind of emotional artisan bread and if you don't write for a few days you run out and have to start the whole process over again from flour.

I am so tired of short-attention-span, trim-the-fat culture. All writing advice these days is for how to write like Chuck Palahniuk. "Cut 'think', cut 'feel', cut 'wonder' - only action, only pushing forward, show and move and move and move." What if I could emulate this style, and still don't want to? What if I want to write like Henry James, with three paragraphs of introspective musings between each dialogue line? The music advice is, "make it shortform, make it Tik-Tok compatible, make it punchy, hit the refrain as soon as possible." What if I want that 10-minute prog rock piece? What if I want that symphony? What if I want it slow and luxurious and lazy? Movies. Series. Poetry. Bodies. Everything is "trimmed trimmed trimmed trimmed, stripped bare, you have three seconds to win me over, make it airport chic." I don't want to win you over, then, I guess. I want the fat left it. I want the pleasure and the indolence and the indulgence. Fuck this art-advice that's always "your art needs Ozempic."

today i took the worst photo of a loon one can possibly take while remaining identifiably a loon