As I previously admitted, I have a tendency to watch bad TV. I’m not big on the tik tok, but I will slip into 2-20 minutes of bad youtube because it is small and light and easily digestible. That tendency lessens in terms of reading. I am very hesitant to put up with a bad book because of the time and thus commitment involved in doing so. However, I wake up to a stream of useless articles designed to further my need to read more articles in the same vein. They string me along dropping the barest tid bits of digestible information like ET chasing M&Ms (Reeses were used for the film adaptation).
That stuff is garbage. I have a tendency to absorb garbage–so much so that my tolerance for deep intellectual or thick academic writing is utterly weakened. Unfortunately, it is that deeper intellectual and scientific stuff that I need to be absorbing in order to know what is next. Presently my writing is referential of what other people tell me is next–which is of course referential of something else. My writing feels like literary hearsay or a distant cousin of plagiarism that has me absolutely disappointed with what I am trying to create.
Garbage is coming in and being filtered through my brain like junk food for the brain, and not much good is getting in around it. Therefore, the solution to the problem is to get back to reading and even watching better stuff. A writer needs to have an intimate relationship with their subject–not a referential one. The writer who studies myth and medieval lore will produce a better and more original and insightful product than the writer who read Game of Thrones and decided, “I can do that.” I believe this to be the rule. I believe this to be the way.