couldn’t i be writing?

Maybe this doesn’t have to be about any one thing, any one obligation. There are so many different kinds. Public and private. Fiction and un-fiction. Anything and everything. Start on something new. Revisit or rework. Write a hundred different things.

I’ve been thinking about a term often used: voracious reader. Reading books seems particularly associated with this idea of hunger, of consuming, devouring; of seeking to be, but never quite being, sated. An endless appetite for truths, fantasies, other lives, other worlds, other feelings.

I think there is a writerly equivalent, and in a way those prolific writers feel the most consummately, compulsively writerly. The Joyce Carol Oateses of the world. Or Anne Rice, whose books seemed a means to an end, like she was interested only in going ever deeper into the question of her own existence, and creating endless works almost as a kind of byproduct: voracious, restless, relentless; never tidying things up, never curating herself for public consumption—not one of life’s self-editors.

I am not necessarily that kind of writer. Sometimes I wish I were. It takes a lot to get something out of me, usually. I like to be a little more particular, to keep things in reserve. To work forever on something that will eventually, one day, be really, really, so good, the best. (Nothing is ever good enou—)

Which is fine. And not every spare waking moment must be spent writing, whether we show it or don’t. And we don’t need to make this about productivity or perfectionism or any of those things that are either overly or underly stressed.

It’s just worth asking, that’s all. Weighed up against other things. Like spending any kind of time on the internet.

Couldn’t I, though?