I can light the fire

I’m hesitant to write. I keep thinking back to the idea of going to school, to sign up again through the registrar to take a bunch of classes that I won’t be interested in so some authority figure can put pressure on me to complete work by a deadline in the hopes that those deadlines and that authority figure and the process of working within those parameters would somehow sculpt me into a better writer. 

I could read and read and write and write on my own, of course, but that doesn’t provide feedback. It doesn’t help me objectively measure improvement. It doesn’t end with status and the feeling of having obtained an expensive master’s degree in a discipline that could be mastered from home for free. I hate the idea of having to go back to school, projects, deadlines, and dogshit classmates whose useless feedback is as awful as it is useless. No one wants to give feedback. I want someone to read my words and tell me what can be improved and how to improve them. I don’t want to have to read anyone else’s shit college romance or pretentious and substandard highbrowed attempt at literary mediocrity. Yet, I want the help to improve. I want something or someone that forces me to write and to write daily. Someone that holds me accountable. Someone that applauds my improvement and scolds my stagnation or regression. Someone or something that holds me accountable. I can light the fire. 

I guess unless you’re somehow able to do that yourself well, be your own teacher, or you have someone close to you who has the eye for literary talent, you’re left either hoping some strangers in the dingy back room of your local library on a Wednesday night will be able to provide you with some constructive criticism or going to your local college where some kid with no life experience outside of the room their parents built for them can tell you you didn’t adequately capture the mind numbingly purposeless and unearned angst-filled life of modern-day suburbia in America.