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What’s More Futile Than an Exercise in Futility?

Answer: The dissection of said exercise.

At least that’s my conclusion after recently coming across this essay by someone calling themself Will Rees: I Do Not Keep a Diary

Now, when I first started reading, I found it to be a witty and well-crafted piece of self-deprecation, even a brave work of biting personal reflection so aptly housed in this age of imposter syndrome. But then I finished it. (Shocking, I know).

That’s when I realized this essay was not autobiographical, but rather it was a tongue-in-cheek criticism of another writer altogether. We’ll call them Writer Y, a fitting nom de guerre given the glaring question mark prompted by the essayist’s choice to even bother writing this criticism at all.

This Will Rees clearly put at least some effort and plenty of words into levying accusations against Writer Y, namely poor time management skills and a giant heaping of misplaced written effort. Now, I don’t know the definition of irony, I only have it scrawled away somewhere, maybe in MediumNotebookRed7_CoffeeRingSexJokes, but it seems like this Will Rees took entirely too much time writing this, instead of doing what? To me, this reeks of avoidance and it is a classic case of a writer using way too many words to express a simple thought. Just say, “I’m envious of Writer Y,” and be done with it. Hemingway would be appalled!

But I guess this is what happens when you aren’t allowed to practice at all or, you know, write drafts of stuff in notebooks. But anyway, I’m going to go not write and watch season 1, episode 4 of “Frasier.” 

 

DISCLAIMER: For the record, I don’t think Rees’s piece is about me, given there is not a single mention of erotic novels, of which I have penned countless. Also, I could really go in on some Reese’s Pieces right now. I better make sure I jot that down in OrangeLegalPad2_ChocolateStain?SelfAffirmations before I forget.

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