Why I Want to Be an Editor and NOT a Writer

Casey woke up and immediately ran to his computer. He had nothing else to do, no one to call and no one to love. He had convinced himself that if he was going to be a writer, he needed to practice everyday. At least three hundred words a day, at first, is what he decided he needed to try. It couldn’t be that hard. Bad authors were all over the place, and if he was going to be the next great American novel writer, he had better get some practice in. Of course, what was there to write about? He had no profound ideas, no greater interest in the greater good of mankind. He was stuck, trapped inside of his wonderful world of constantly getting stoned and coming up with ideas that way. But how profound or original was a stoned thought? Was it the question of how your hands can’t touch themselves, or the Great Conspiracy which loomed over all’s heads? One hundred sixty three words in less than a couple of minutes, he thought to himself. This is easy, he convinced himself. But where was the profundity? Was he saying anything important, ever? Did he need to? Was that important? What did Dean Koontz ever say that was important? But he didn’t want to be Dean Koontz. He wanted to be Jack Kerouac or J.D. Salinger or William S. Burroughs. Most importantly, he wanted to be himself, but he didn’t think that that was at all possible. Not in today’s society, where every line that could be written had been, where every thought was nothing but a rip-off of another thought. “There is nothing I could say that I haven’t thought before.” Only fifteen words to go, he rationalized with himself. Oh God here it comes. I’m done.