Comfort with, or at least, tolerance of, the status quo. Letting things stay as they are, usually implying that they are on a downhill slope. Living each day the same as the last, letting life and love slip away. I was thinking today that this is how everyone's life is ruined. Because they become complacent with inadequacy, their own, or wrongdoings.
I wish that I could become a great writer. Always I have found that when I fix my sights on a desire, somehow my writing catches up, without my realizing it. It just becomes second nature. Always now my stories fall short of what I would express. I don't dislike what I have written in the past, but when I think of what I would write now, I am overwhelmed by the disparity between my choices. On the one hand, I can keep writing about the things I have been writing about for years, reworking the same themes, perfecting my formulas. But the thought of that now is stifling. Somehow it doesn't seem good enough.
And on the other hand, there is the idea that I might write something greater than myself, outside of my problems, touching something that I might never touch otherwise, other societies, problems, ideas, that I have never experienced. Lately I have had this ever-increasing interest in the world and what is happening in it. I don't know how it can co-exist peacefully in my writing with the other things I love to write about. My dreams exceed my abilities and I don't know how to bridge the gap.
Reading seems the best way. But what to read? I have found no newspaper or magazine to my satisfaction. News is so brief and perfunctory. It tells me the facts while omitting everything I really want to know-- how people are thinking and feeling, their ideas, their daily lives. News doesn't allow me to be there. I want to read something that will let me be there. And also I want to write to let others be there. But where?
To hell with formulas! And happy endings! And complacency.
I wish that I could become a great writer. Always I have found that when I fix my sights on a desire, somehow my writing catches up, without my realizing it. It just becomes second nature. Always now my stories fall short of what I would express. I don't dislike what I have written in the past, but when I think of what I would write now, I am overwhelmed by the disparity between my choices. On the one hand, I can keep writing about the things I have been writing about for years, reworking the same themes, perfecting my formulas. But the thought of that now is stifling. Somehow it doesn't seem good enough.
And on the other hand, there is the idea that I might write something greater than myself, outside of my problems, touching something that I might never touch otherwise, other societies, problems, ideas, that I have never experienced. Lately I have had this ever-increasing interest in the world and what is happening in it. I don't know how it can co-exist peacefully in my writing with the other things I love to write about. My dreams exceed my abilities and I don't know how to bridge the gap.
Reading seems the best way. But what to read? I have found no newspaper or magazine to my satisfaction. News is so brief and perfunctory. It tells me the facts while omitting everything I really want to know-- how people are thinking and feeling, their ideas, their daily lives. News doesn't allow me to be there. I want to read something that will let me be there. And also I want to write to let others be there. But where?
To hell with formulas! And happy endings! And complacency.