Pointless Rambling

[Tyrion]

I don't really know how to describe this, but once you've read it you'll get it.

 

"Pointless Rambling"

 

I can't pick a career that focuses on a single thing. One day, I want to experience a new environment, to work on matters that take me to inexistent places and times, the next I want to explore the world I know in greater detail. Those needs are highly irregular, and no real job can satisfy them. Thankfully, being a writer is no real job.

 

I write for no one in particular. I write according to what I feel, and no one can tell me how I'm going to feel next. I can't control that myself, so you couldn't even say that I'm my own boss. The health benefits suck, too. Why did I have to be a writer?

 

The thought of it all proves very unsettling. How am I supposed to live with this? If I do manage to get an income from writing, who's to say that I can keep doing it afterwards? It's a known fact that I can't stick to a work schedule. Unless a sudden inspiration tells me that writing is what I want to be doing, I'm most likely to just think about writing.

 

For one very simple reason, writing dominates all other forms of activity or thought. No matter what your own odd little brain thinks can become a sentence. No matter what you're doing after lunch can end up as a tale. In most cases though, that thought and that tale will bore the vast majority of readers. The most probable exception would be yourself, and you'd need to be the egocentric type. I belong to that group, by the way – trust me. If there's anyone you can trust it's certainly me. Nobody could ever become as trustworthy as I am, even if they made it their life's goal. Now that you trust me, and that we've established that I'm egocentric, it'll interest you to know that my own actions and thoughts fail to interest me. Not quite all of them, but certainly a huge chunk.

 

So what does that say about my writing? Nothing. Why should it? I don't write about everything I believe in. I don't even believe in everything I write – I hope that doesn't affect your trust too much. My job as a writer is not to tell you what I think; it's to put you in a situation I imagine, so that you can tell me what you think.

 

That's why you should always refer to the text as the subject when you're analyzing a piece. If you speak for the text, you can never be wrong. If you venture a guess that this text tries to establish a link between imagination and realization, nobody can prove you wrong. If you say that the author writes this because he feels the need to justify his life's choice, then you are wrong, and I can prove it just by saying so – seeing as you trust me, and that I'm the author. The explanation is simple really: once complete, the work has a life of its own, and not even the writer can tell you that you view it erroneously, much less define his own creation.

 

It's very easy to call a writer crazy after reading his work. When text comes out of one's head, it'll only ever be a semi-coherent assembling of ideas. When you read it, you follow the ideas as best you can. The truth behind the ideas, however, will remain unattainable. Sure, you can think you get the content, but more always lurks behind an unseen metaphor. You need to be crazy to assume the responsibility for everything you're sending out there, and you need to be crazy to claim to be teaching people you will never know about a concept you will never fully grasp.

 

Yet with all of that, I find myself in an amazing position. With everything I write, I add to the potential that you will read it, find a reason for its existence that I never conceived of, and credit me with it. That could explain why some authors never discuss their publications; that way we can never be sure if they were aware of the ideas they may suggest, and we must assume that they were.

 

I'm above using cheap tricks like that one, though, so I'll tell you the deal right away. I purposely – and with full awareness, I can't stress this enough – put in any brilliant thought you might extract from these last few paragraphs. Trust me.

Edited February 21, 2006 by Tyrion

[Katzaniel]

Awesome, Tyrion. Awesome stuff.

 

Not sure if I trust ya though.

[Tyrion]

Well of course you trust me! It says so right there in the text!

 

And thanks, I wasn't too confident about it at first. It's almost halfway between a long joke and an essay. I was aiming for the latter, but I couldn't pass up all the humor that came to mind. I'm slowly warming up to the mix as I read it over and over though.