Was watching an interview by Charles Bukowski. Hadn’t seen him or heard him before but I’m sure I’ll get more of him. He said writers are all boring. He says they’re boring because each line is dull. A→B, B→C. They’re like that, he says, because they’re building to the one good idea. Or they’re supposed to be. And then, he says, the idea they’re building to is no good anyway.

Fucking autocorrect man. Let me write. 

What I’ve decided to take from his words, what I’ve filtered out, or sifted from a pile of mostly worthless sand, is that each line matters. He’s got a point. So many lines are written just to get to the next one. It’s the journey, not the yadayada… sorry to bring that up. But really. Why can’t we have fun writing each line? Why can’t we try and perfect each one? Why can’t we look at one sentence, disregard the book, and look at that one sentence as a standalone and say, that’s a good one. 

I got a line of mine I like. “We’re real enough to someone.” That’s it. I remember saying that in an auditorium full of people at a talk I wasn’t giving, and I turned red. I like the line, but it stands atop the others. It’s at the end of the book. You’d have to read a whole book for that line to make sense, for it to resound and reverberate like it does for me. 

Here’s a better one. “The freak’s looks played tricks on me; its smile is silly yet its eyes roar orange.” 

No, I am not giving you the context.

What I will give you instead is a hint. Listen. Say it aloud. 

…

Get it? Yeah.  

If not, I’ll spell it out for you. An “x” sounds perplexed. An “s” sounds soothing. An “r” rumbles. It sounds like it means. 

This is what I want my writing to be. Not just for a few lines like in poetry, pages of mostly white space. The whole goddamn thing. A novella. Eventually a novel. 

It’s brutal work, though. Sometimes I get stuck on one sentence and it takes a whole day. How many sentences are there in a book? And editing is even worse. But someone’s gotta do it. Or gonna do it. And then I’d have to watch. Sickening. 

This is what I mean by atomic literature. Plots get predictable. And when they’re unpredictable, usually we applaud them just for the sake of being different. Characters assimilate into archetypes. Themes run dry like our rivers. So everything has already been written, then? Pfft. Literary craftsmanship, the crafting of lines, sentences—this is the future.  

Do I hope everyone does this? No. But, eventually, they will. They’ll see me doing it. I’m gonna raise the platform. I’m gonna raise the standard. Anyone who can climb that step gets to follow me. Anyone who can’t was probably never meant to.