The black bird

Writing is like making music. You can be a solo artist, or join a band. Blogging is like being an independent artist, putting out free MP3s to create a buzz. You brag about how you will never sell-out, because you are in it for the love, not the money.

And you will not have to sell-out, because nobody will ever offer you that money. Why should they? The music is cheap, unoriginal. The blogs are insular, often completely boring. Either they strike a chord with you, to keep the music theme, or they offend you so greatly that you return every day to see the next outrage.

This entry is introspective. A blog entry about blogs, how unoriginal. Yet, I am not going to punish myself for it. For the first time, I am writing with others. Imagine us in a basement. We know how to play our instruments fairly well. We may have different musical influences, but we like each other enough to want to jam.

And so I sit at the keyboard, feeling my shoulder strengthen, trying to remember the brilliant ideas that I had just before I fell asleep. If only I had written them down, they were such good concepts!

Here is a question for you. No, let us make it a scenario. You are an aspiring writer. Your friends and lovers (all of them) say that you have talent. You can spell. You are at home say, recovering from a devastating shoulder injury, and you read The Maltese Falcon. Hammett's writing, his story-telling, is pure and terrifying. Do you feel encouraged to continue writing, or do you feel as though you can never write something as good as this story, and so give up forever?