Oops, I Accidentally Forgot to Write

This always happens. I shell out $50 or whatever on an annual membership to get access to all the cool member’s-only doohickeys and the better rate of pay, only to completely forget about Vocal when things pick up in my personal life. Stuff has been happening, y’all, stuff that I can write about! Guys, I went to Europe! I saw dozens of plays! I’ve kept up to date on One Piece! There are dozens of things I can write about—literal dozens—but do I write about them? Hell, no. That’s not the way old Steve functions, no, sir.

I think this speaks to a larger problem in the writer’s existential question, especially in this economy. Every writer that I’ve had the chance to sit down with, from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage (hey! That’s something else I can write about!) to the Edgar Allen Poe / Charles Dickens impersonator who used to patronize my childhood library (whose real name I don’t know because he goes by “Willy Shakespeare” on Facebook) has dispensed this advice: Keep writing. It’s simple. Super simple. A monkey on a typewriter could do it. Have I done it? No. Should I have done it? Yes. Absolutely. No doubt. So why haven’t I? Why do I continue to make excuses?

If I want to make it in this industry—if any of us want to make it in this industry—especially, dear readers, dear friends, dear rivals, dear sworn enemies, in this weird and easily-quantifiable attention-economy that has developed in recent years—I need to sit down, turn off the music blasting the thoughts right out of my brain, and make words happen. It’s easy. Super easy. A million monkeys on a million typewriters could do it. Am I a monkey on a typewriter?

I would like to update you on what’s been happening in my life—not to list off excuses, mind you, though that’s the instinct that my monkey-on-a-typewriter-brain is definitely leaning heavily on, but rather to contextualize things. I’ve recently found myself irreparably addicted to em-dashes. I went to Europe, visited ten countries, spent ten days in Ukraine, got my heart broken twice. I paid $1000 to avoid a two-day layover in Reykjavik instead of taking the opportunity to explore a bit because I was tired. I got really, really, really into dividend investing. I wrote a play about a woman who falls in love with an AI version of Shakespeare and gets really, really sad about it. I redoubled my efforts to learn Ukrainian on Duolingo. I got scammed by a Polish transit cop. I learned that I don’t like Poland very much. Those previous two things might be related. I bought a ton of fridge magnets. I began work in earnest on my Master’s Thesis, have been transcribing and translating and interviewing and freewriting every moment of my spare time. So much of my life can be put to words. So many of those words can be put on this site. So many of those words can earn me $0.006/read. My life is so easy to monetize, so why the hell am I not doing that?

This article is not meant to call myself out, or to shame myself into writing. This article was written with the intention to vomit. I am a strong writer, as are many of you; you just don’t find the time to monetize your life. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe you’re out there living life, not worried if the transit cop that’s scamming you out of sixty bucks on this Polish bus at 1am will make a good story that’ll net you twenty cents. I don’t claim to know what’s going on with you. Write. Or don’t.