Hello,
How’s your 2024 going? Isn’t it weird how quickly the year seems to be hurtling forward? We are already done with 3% of the year. Days are leaking out, like water from a rusty cracked pipe in a grungy one-bedroom in Mumbai - incessantly depleting - as no one pays any attention.
In the meantime, I have had a great run of the last two months with lots of new subscribers, nice validation from multiple places and a general infusion of a stimulant into the Could be Worse universe. Like I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Validation is my crack cocaine - makes me high and insufferable. In my insufferable halo that lasted a few days, I wrote about, well, writing. This is the kind of self-indulgent, meta article I try to avoid here but occasionally you’ve got to put up with the little drama queen in me.
One of the most visceral memories from the sci-fi movies I watched in my childhood is seeing the birth of Xenomorph in Alien.
If you’re not versed in the Alien universe, a Xenomorph is a highly aggressive, hideous, extraterrestrial, parasitic species.
It looks like this.
It’s the creepiest predator in the Alien verse:
Acid blood ✅
Segmented blade-like tails ✅
A jaw that can smash skulls ✅
Vicious hunter ✅
A creepy, weird birthing process ✅
You see, Xeno babies need to be incubated on living hosts to be born.
Imagine this. You are going for a quick stroll on Hiveworld. It’s dusk and you are humming a little tune to yourself as you walk when you stumble over something. It looks greasy. Organic. What’s that?' Those inane words are the last ones from your mouth as a Xenomorph rises from the ground.
Your evening has taken quite a nose dive. You wish you’d sat and read Could be Worse posts in your home.
The Xenomorph snags your sorry ass and takes you to its hive, which stinks and is full of alien creatures and huge eggs. You try to scream but instead, blood gurgles from your throat thanks to the massive talons poking through your throat.
Seeing you, the eggs begin to wiggle. Odd, you think, before they unfurl an ugly alien muscle-tentacle-sheath thing that latches onto your face. You are now the host for the Facehugger - cute name, but an utterly disgusting thing. Things are getting implanted into you through your throat.
Oh well, all for a good cause. After all, you are creating life, a little Xeno baby that grows like cancer, slowly draining your life. Then at some point, this alien cutie patootie is ready to emerge from you. It is now called a Chestburster.
This time, the naming scientists have matched the horror with the name. As the name implies, this little horror child bursts open your chest to emerge into the world. A new Xenomorph is born.
Why am I talking about this on a peaceful Friday morning?
Just to make a point (and also indulge my love for Alien). Writing, to me, feels like birthing a Xenomorph:
The ideas when they first come are the eggs.
When I start putting the words, it becomes a Facehugger, slowly smothering me, draining me of energy and ideas.
When it’s finally over, it becomes a Chestburster and slithers out into the wild. I live, though.
Recently, I happened to mention to a friend that I’ve been writing since I was like twelve or something. I also mentioned that ‘Could be Worse’ (this newsletter) has been going on for about four years now.
“Oh wow, so you must be earning from it?” he said.
Oh, you naive summer boy of capitalism, I thought.
“Not really. I’ve earned a total of $0 from this so far”
This left the person flabbergasted. Pick a niche, he said. Write for external publications to get the word out; Maybe make it a podcast. His brain whirred with ideas on how to monetize until he realized that the light had gone from my eyes.
The truth is I write because I cannot help it. That’s it. After all, who would voluntarily birth a Xenomorph every day, week, or month unless they are addicted to it?
Writing as an addiction
I thought I was God’s own drug addict. And if God hadn’t meant for me to get high he wouldn’t have made being high so much, like, perfect.
Now, I know I got one more high left in me but I doubt very seriously if I have one more recovery.
- Walon, The Wire
The Wire, apart from being the best TV show ever (I am going to continue to beat you to death with this opinion), is also the best portrayal of addiction I’ve seen on TV, definitely the most empathetic one.
I am inexorably attracted to addiction as a subject. Some of my favorite music had been composed by addicts. Authors who’d impacted me the most - like Stephen King and Philip. K. Dick - have been addicts. I root for the addicts on TV (My boy, Kendall Roy).
This is not to glorify addiction. It sucks. But I get it, though.
Most of us are addicted to something:
High-performing Silicon Valley CEOs who are addicted to work.
The friend who just needs to party every week with booze.
The teenager who just can’t stop gaming.
That aunty who cannot stop going to temples.
I have my addictions. And no, I am not going to list them all now.
But I just cannot stop writing.
Writing, for me, is a compulsion to put thoughts on paper. I write on little notes scattered across devices, in my head when walking around, write on notebooks, write tweets, comments, to-do lists, messages, reviews on platforms, etc.
99% of what I write is shit but it’s got to be done. The egg needs to be laid. Some may be birthed into a xenomorph while others lie as forgotten eggs everywhere.
When I don’t write, I have physical and mental withdrawal symptoms. I feel tired and the world looks more grey.
The highs and lows
Like any addiction, writing disregulates emotions.
Just the writing itself makes me the most whiny, insecure child one day and the most annoying narcissistic pig on another.
Close to actual quotes:
“I spent an entire hour and just wrote 100 words of tripe! Why do I even bother”
“I think I forgot how to write”
“I should stop polluting the world with more words when it is no good”
Also, these:
“I just wrote the perfect 800 words ever written”
“You won’t believe how funny the thing I wrote is”
“I could write a bestseller”
It’s never as terrible or as good, as evidenced by N’s reaction to these. Clearly, it’s an abusive relationship (the writing, not N 😅). But the abuse doesn’t end there.
Validation is a drug
The second abusive part of the relationship starts when your Xenomorph is out into the world. The validation, or the lack of it, I get for the writing has the power to affect me for hours, days, weeks, and sometimes even months.
I had written a whole other article on the highs and lows of writing and creating back in 2017. If you want to read that it’s here on Medium:
The volatility of my mood while writing is something I’d never experienced before.
I had always been fairly even-keeled when it came to my moods and did not usually suffer through highs and lows very frequently…..On average, I used to be at a happy lukewarm.
But when I started writing, it all changed. One day it is sunshine and blue skies and the next day it is thunderstorms and brooding darkness. I often range between questioning my credibility to even writing a word to thinking that someday I would author a bestseller. I am always only as good as the last sentence I write.
I will repurpose a chart I created for it and a snippet from that on why validation is like crack cocaine for me.
Curtains
Thanks for indulging the diva side.
The world has hard jobs and easy jobs. Emergency service work - hard job. Factory, Construction, Mining, etc. - hard job. Being a therapist - a hard job. Investigative journalism - hard job. Being a physicist who is obsessed with solving one piece of a grand puzzle and dedicating an entire life to it - hard!
Then there’s writing.
You sit and you type. That’s it. You can make yourself a nice coffee, find a good, comfortable space, and just sit and type. Elemental. Cozy, even.
I invoke the wizard of words, Terry Prattchet here
Writing is a really easy job. All the words have been invented and all you have to do is put them in order.
Again, from the same book:
“How hard can writing be? After all, most of the words are going to be 'and,' 'the,' and 'I,' and 'it,' and so on, and there's a huge number to choose from, so a lot of the work has been done for you.” ― Snuff
Writing is another job. I approach writing almost like a factory worker would approach a shift.
Have a schedule.
Open Google Docs (I don’t need fancy text editors)
Bloody write.
There is no inspiration to strike or a muse to sing to me. I do not care if I get my favorite brand of coffee or about having a shot of whatever helps. I do not even care if I feel happy, sad, sleepy, tired, etc. The moods influence what I write, of course. But writing at the end of the day is just sitting and typing.
I will close this by invoking the author who is my single biggest inspiration - Stephen King. I’ve read nearly everything he’s written but my favorite book of his is On Writing - a non-fiction memoir/guide. I have been carrying this book (with only a handful of others) with me across houses, cities, and countries for more than a decade.
The book is full of gems but this quote always gives me the slap on the back I need:
Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.
Could be Worse,
Tyag
Loved this. Also, any fan of The Wire is a friend of mine.
How’s this for validation, Tyag? That was fantastic!