So I just read an interview with Hunter S. Thompson in the Paris Review. I was fabulously amused, to say the least. There is something shockingly crude and yet incredibly profound about him. A drunk, stoned, wack-job of a journalist who had a brilliant mind and functioned best in a state the less artistic would call “insane” and the everyday Joe Soap might term “high”.
The interviewer’s concluding question to Thompson was “If you had that fortune sitting in the bank would you still write?”. Thompson’s answer? “Probably not”.
Whaaat?
I think there’s the general assumption that writers must write. We have vestiges of some legacy, left to us by the romantics, that runs a little like this: the artist is impassioned and overwhelmed by an idea and cannot rest until it’s laid out in verse (or a novel, article etc). I suppose this is, in part, true but writing is work, hard work and a writer’s success is measured in pages not ideas. Ideas are nothing. No matter how noble. Unless it’s written there is no story. I fancy writing as being central to who I am. Except I ignore that centrality. A lot. No deadline, no write. But if even the crème de la crème of pieces are often cash-pressed inspirations then I guess I can absolve myself of my slothfulness.
Under Construction 