Why I Write

Title TK ^ | 5 Jan 2023 | Stephanie Gutman

[Rummyfan]

"Was he alone in possession of a memory?” wondered Winston Smith as he starts a diary in the novel 1984.

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I resonated to that line massively when I read it again in my umpteenth re-reading of George Orwell’s masterpiece.

Yes, I know. Constantly referring to the Orwellian-ness of everything is just as bad as comparing every authoritarian who pops up to Hitler, but there is this feeling around the edges these days…of being stuck in an eternal present where no one knows anything about the past; that nothing’s very deep; that opinions are always binary and that there’s no time for nuance. You can’t stop for nuance, because we’re driven on to the next thing, and because none of us have attention spans anymore, and because of the FOMO (fear of missing out) disease.

I am a former magazine and feature writer, a two-time book writer…a word-worker, in other words, feeling adrift in this chaotic cacophony of content, trying to figure out if any of it really matters, trying to figure out where, if anywhere, I fit in.

My substack title comes from magazine work or any sort of long-form writing. The abbreviation means "to come," as in “the-title-to-this-substack-is-coming…sometime, when I get a bloody second, and will you please stop nagging about trifles, Mr. Small-Minded Editor!”

(That’s a risky, and kind of inside baseball, joke. I would never really insult those magnificent creatures called editors; it’s just that we are natural enemies, like New York and New Jersey, Knicks v Nets, Army v. Navy, workers and management and so on.)

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Bookmark

[matthew fuller]

I second that motion.

[Terry L Smith]

ob my goodness!! naw, heck maw, has there ever been a love-lost relationship between ‘mr. editor and mr. writer’.

(aside guffaw)

writers create, fine tune, then grudgingljy release their ‘8 x 10 glossy’ work to ‘the editor of The Daily Planet’, wh decides the submitted work must fit his ‘5 x 8 format’, which starts the upcoming heated dialogue.

(btdt more than once)
thanks for writing this!