It’s easy to write in private. Half-baked ideas, sloppy spelling, and an audience of one. I’ve been doing it for years now, and I’ve piled up over 400 pages of stories and memories. After watching the SNL 50th Anniversary documentary, I was hit with a heavy dose of inspiration. What they’re doing in that studio—and have been doing for the last bazillion years—is magic. Losing their minds, throwing ideas at the wall, seeing what sticks, refining it, killing it, hopefully laughing at it, then showing it to the world Saturday night. There’s a carefree urgency to the work that has made it what it is.
I write every day for work. Headlines, scripts, and concepts that get shaved down through the process of reviews, word counts, legal, and all the other mumbo jumbo of advertising—and that’s fine. But as I turn to my Google Drive every morning, I remind myself of the juicy stuff—the Hunter Thompsons and Hemingways of the world. The old-school vagabonds who spilled raw emotions and gutsy prose onto the page. The style of writing that grips, fucks, and makes you think about the beauty of words. It doesn’t always make logical sense, but it just feels right.
“Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives... and to the "good life", whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.” -Hunter S. Thompson
What exactly is this?
It’s a journal of sorts. A public-facing kick in the butt to think about an audience for my words. Like dust under the bed, I’ve stacked too many pages that have never seen the light of day. And that doesn’t mean they’ll shine here, but they will serve as the foundation to a new creative endeavor. A spark of motivation to flip the script and put words, ideas, and whatever else comes to mind into the world.
I hope to use this space as a dumping ground for ideas. Some stories may be rooted in fact, while others are littered with fiction. Some may be themes or thoughts, or even just observations. There’s so much life spinning in the everyday, capturing and putting it to paper is the fun part.