Happy Fun Cog

Bill,

How are you? Well, I hope.

I've been reading a biography of William Faulkner, which includes a good deal of correspondence between Faulkner and his mother, his mentor(s), etc. Reading well-written correspondence, especially correspondence from the early part of the 20th century when writing was modern enough to still read smoothly now yet also much more formal than now, always makes me feel guilty. It makes me feel like I should be writing long emails to family and friends that capture my life in the most beautiful ways, involving minutiae of the physical world as well as the spiritual world. Yet most of my correspondence these days is some version of "Dude, I'm stressed."

In reading this more complex prose of 100 years ago that was in essence one man's casual, day-to-day writing, I feel like I have a small penis. As such, I will now be writing to you in a way that hopefully helps me engage my own correspondence skills without requiring me to spend a lot of time editing. I've also been doing a lot of creative writing, and if I spend too much time writing like this, I will have less time to do creative writing. Which is simply unacceptable. I don't know that I will ever feel good about my creative writing because of the fact that I did no writing after college for such a long time and as such I feel that time can best be summed up as "The Lost Years." No matter how much time I spend on writing now, it will never be good enough.

But enough of that. You've heard all of that before. How is Mary? How is the little one?

Sincerely,
Lionel

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Leo,

A, yet another letter from you filled with self-doubt about writing and some form of self-flagellation. You do realize that you were engaged in such doubting masochism back before you even graduated from college, don't you? Haven't you ever considered that, by worrying as you do, you're doing nothing more than continuing the pattern of behavior that led to the crippling doubt which paralyzed you creatively for so long?

Or perhaps I swing too hard, too soon. I know that you struggled for a long time with alcohol. I think I've always had a hard time accepting that you actually had a problem because I drank along with you for part of the time. I drank too much, I gained weight like you, and so on. So I felt like I understood what you were going through. Yet I always had Mary, and then of course I moved and didn't see how you spent your daily life for many of the years you struggled. Plus, my own father struggled with alcohol addiction when I was younger, and I think it's quite possible that I don't put much thought into the depth of your struggles because that would mean revisiting emotional terrain that I would much rather leave to the darkening mists of memory.

All in all, I feel your idea of said correspondence is folly, but it may be an enjoyable folly as well. Just be sure to take the time to actually enjoy it, and not treat it as a form of penance for your sins.

Mary says hi.

All the best,
Bill