Decay and Doubt.

I’ve nearly lived a third of my time on this Earth, and truths are showing through the fog of life’s uncertainties. As such, it is becoming increasingly clear that I will never be a notable author. No one does, nor will they ever, read my stories with any sort of avidity. I will likely never live up to the image I have always held of myself —an unkempt man spending his days in a dimly lit room, surrounded by dusty books and empty bottles of whiskey, putting fantastic lies to paper and drinking black coffee, with a burnt-out cigarette sagging listlessly on his lip. That dream, I should think, is dead. All dead, even; there’s nothing left to do but go through that dream’s pockets and look for loose change, as Miracle Max might suggest.

Still, that’s no reason to stop.

When delusions of grandeur are all but gone, there’s nothing left to consider but your own sanity. Therefore, each novel I complete will act as a magical Pensive, teeming with what vagaries and nightmares may come; tugged from my brain at the tip of a pen, and affixed to paper for safe-keeping. In this way, my writing will be a way of removing the ghosts from my brain, like Egon Spengler storing the contents of a full trap into the Ecto Containment Unit—when the light is green, my brain is clean.

If I’m truly a writer, being read is just a luxury; an inessential frill. After all, when the piece is written, my work is done. What happens next is between the Gods and the Universe. Let them work it out. In the meantime, I have writing to do.