Swimming Against the Tide.

I just read a comment on YouTube in which the writer imagines a scenario about lying on the beach, swimming in the sea, hearing the cry of seagulls and the sound of children playing in the distance, retiring to one’s hammock ‘with the one you love’ and sharing earbuds… Get the picture?

It’s cheesy as hell, the imagery is mundane, the writing is about as lyrical as melting ice cream, and the very best you can say about it is that it’s ‘nice.’ Which is fine; if that’s the image the music conjures up for the guy, so be it, and he has every right to say so in his own words. But writing it ain’t, and yet…

Response after response after response tells him how wonderful it is, and how it conjures up beautiful images, and how the world needs more of this sort of thing, and how he should consider writing professionally, and so on.

And this goes some way to demonstrate why it’s very easy for good writers to starve in garrets.