read & write & bleed then cry

by Justina Dobush

I’ve known it since I was seven — I will be a writer, I am a writer, no matter what’s going on, literature is the only answer. Since then, I have written thousands of pages—fairy tales, diaries, poetry, prose, short stories, reportages, interviews, columns, book reviews, and so on. But why haven’t I finished any of the books I so badly wanted to write? 

1.

I first fell in love with books at an early age, before I even learned how to read them. Inventing my stories for every book cover I met was so pleasant. And yeah, I didn’t read many books until I was twenty years old, because for me it was more interesting to write, and still my primary temptation is the excogitation of plots and full stories. Then something happened. I started to read passionately; this action swallowed me with inhuman power, and I thought all those words might try to break free on my pages, but they didn’t. The truth is that even these words are so fucking hard to type. So what the hell is going on? Is it me or the excessively high writing requirements because of reading, or maybe something else? Can it be possible that reading became the main reason for not writing?

At first, reading too many good writers seemed like a reasonable explanation because, come on, how many of us aren’t afraid of not becoming the next Virginia Woolf, Tom Wolfe, Thomas Wolfe, and even Naomi Wolf or Michael Wolff (seriously, you can choose whichever Wo(o)l(l)f(f)(e) you want, nobody’s going to judge)? On the other hand, I firmly believe that we have too many books in this world, and if you’re writing without such intentions as winning the Nobel Prize or changing the world, then it’s better for you to stop. Really, how many trees were killed for books, which we’d be better off calling scrap paper? How many books deserve to be burned in a fire? How many books weren’t ever read by a single reader? How many writers have just one reader – themselves? Do you remember what Bukowski wrote? 

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you 

in spite of everything, 

don’t do it

Honestly, the whole poem could be quoted here, as well as Hemingway’s thoughts about writing, but you have probably already read most of them, so I’ll finish this part in the style of Tokarczuk’s Nobel Prize speech. Contemporary literature is so contingent upon the market's needs, so contrived and forced, that sometimes I consider giving up on my writing entirely if only that didn’t hurt so much.

2.

Despite these reasons, I feel like without writing, my personality wouldn’t ever be complete. Sometimes, I feel pain in my fingers, in my mouth, in my lips, in my breath, in my brain, and in my eyes just because I don’t have my own writing. I don’t own my words, sentences, paragraphs, pages. I don’t own any language at all. I don’t own my speech, passion, or, more importantly, the compulsion to shout out loud my biggest story, my most significant truth. What does it mean when we cannot convey meaningful thoughts with relative ease? Who are we without the ability to put words into our thoughts? And what will happen to our thoughts and memories if they are never written? Where will they go? Will they reach some unique paradise where they meet other unwritten dreams, memories, stories, and experiences? Will somebody find them after we die? Will somebody care about them? What if they disappear entirely or, even worse – remain silent forever? What will the eternity of time and space do to them? What if we lost part of our humanity with every lost “life story”? What if condemning our stories to oblivion is the same sin as not burying the dead? Or what if they aren’t worth remembering at all? What if it turns out that some people’s lives are more valuable than others? What will the UN and NGOs declare about equal rights and the necessity of every individual to tell their life story? Is it unnecessary?  

Just imagine a vast library containing billions of stories about everyone. Would it be interesting for you to read those stories which are not typical in the literary sense? Would it be interesting for you to read about some typical routine of childhood-school-university-work-family-death just because that is the life story of another ordinary, even unextraordinary, human being? Or are we only interested in the lives of others if they were raped, murdered, suffocated by Zyklon B, not strong enough, too strong, too weird, too depressed, too suicidal, too pretty, too ugly, too thin, too fat, too dishonest, too honest, too antisocial, too kind, too sick, too healthy, or any other hyperbole? Why are we so afraid to read about something normal that afterward, we’ll have hope that in this chaotic world, something ordinary can exist, something “just fine.” On the other hand, isn't every life so unpredictable and unique that it is worth writing about? Why do we underestimate ourselves so much that we think that only extremes can be exciting, breathtaking, and shocking? Why don't we believe that our lives are as attractive as they are?

And with these questions, I’m not trying to convince you that without my books you’ll miss something important in this world, because when I started to write this column, my goal was to say that too much reading can be unhealthy for us, for our writing and also to think about the damage of social media, which are stealing our words. But now, more than anything, I want to write about my fatigue because of all that necessity for extraordinary and unbelievable shit. Really, I am fucking tired of this ongoing routine in an effort to get noticed. You can’t just write about what you want because people will say: too boring, too usual, too stupid, too childish, too postmodern, too classic, too archaic, too dumb, too bright, too pretentious, too extra, too simple, too long, too short, too trendy, too untrendy, too me too, too patriarchal, too ‘not what the market needs’ and a lot of others too, too, too, too. Instead of expressing our thoughts naturally, we are trying to live in a reality that doesn’t exist. We’ve never met Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Odysseus, or Tyler Durden. We cannot see the literature world in its reality; we’ll never get acquainted with hobbits, dementors, vampires, demons, angels, masons, or the Illuminati. We are so weak, lifeless, moveless, and formless compared to our greatest literary heroes that, in some way, it’s embarrassing. Okay, we had Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte, but statistically, these great personalities comprise maybe just 1% of mankind. So why are we so obsessed with them if it’s nearly impossible to exist on their level? Why don’t we write about how normal it is to be normal? Why do we need always to be better than we are?

So yeah, now I understand my problem. I can’t write — not because of the countless great books which were written throughout history, but because I am afraid of not being ‘good enough’, I am afraid of not becoming a ‘bestseller’, ‘recommended for reading on some special days’, ‘worth reading’ and so on. One of my writer-friends would say: forget about all that, sit down and type, fuck them.  But what if I can’t write without mentioning that fear and the fear of what’s going on in this world? Yes, I know this can be just an excuse, laziness, or a sign that this is not my talent. But let’s see how impossibly cruel the literature world is nowadays. Take a look at all those cutesy book covers, the hegemony of American and English writers, market rules, capricious readers, Amazon University, the obsession with Trump, the obsession with gender, tolerance, eco-activism, blogging, criticism, the declining number of readers, and careless journalism. Dear citizens of the literature world, we are fucked, our world has turned into some imperial totalitarianism, and we’re doing nothing about it.

When was the last time we said that we have some serious problems that can cause damage to our civilization? Was last year's Nobel Prize for literature satisfactory (by the way, I am not talking about how they awarded this prize to Handke, who was a big fan of Milosevic, here)? Did someone really listen to Tokarczuk’s speech? Did we do more than listen? Did she pronounce her disturbing thoughts about literature in such a way, with such unusual passion, that afterward, we all came together for the long-awaited revolution? 

I keep saying the same thing repeatedly about the literature world: we lost ourselves. All we can do is talk about the miraculous properties of reading, the treatment of mental diseases with books, the art of book covers, ‘important’ themes in fiction and non-fiction, blaming those who are not so intelligent or calm, idolizing cozy libraries, bookstores and the ‘book world’ overall, masturbating over feminine power and inclusion, seeing ourselves as the chosen ones, seeing ourselves as some caste and acting pathetic when people don’t acknowledge our so-called glorious truth. Therefore sometimes I think that nowadays, literature is much worse than politics because, you know, nobody doubts the baseness and hypocrisy in politics, but the majority still believes in some weird kind of innocence in literature, and it’s so disingenuous that it’s wretched. 

I just don’t understand how someone so immensely incredible can turn into such a bitch. But now I finally understand what happened with my writing – I saw the literature world in its true colors.