This is me Typing
There was a short time period where I was on Instagram as an author. I hated it. Thinking back on it still gives me anxiety. It was mostly just desperate authors following each other to try and inflate their numbers. As if followers means book sales, or as if book sales speak to the quality of a work or your value as an artist.
But I digress.
On Instagram there was a writerly meta, an ever-shifting culture of seasonal content formats, and it seemed every writer was jealously copying whatever seemed successful in the hopes of it working for them. A few things persisted, though. There were always videos of very aesthetic looking people in aesthetic looking settings writing on their (aesthetic?) Macbooks. They’d narrate over these videos of themselves apparently noveling away with their writerly tea and lit candles both equally within reach—and thus conveniently within the frame of the shot.
The problem with me trying to be on Instagram is that, firstly, I am male. If I were a beautiful male, that could be overlooked. But Instagram is a pretty place. My look is Jack Black on a good day and People of Wal-Mart on the rest. Despite this, I gave it my best shot.
I attempted to create a few writerly videos during those dark Instagram times to follow the meta. To put myself out there for clicks and likes and follows in the hopes that they would become book sales, or at least interest. Most of the meta was beyond my comfort zone. But I thought that maybe I could at least try the writing on camera thing.
Setting up a camera and then actually working on a novel felt absolutely insane. So I faked it. I popped open my favorite notes app and started typing a stream of conciousness, feeling very fake and very stupid and wondering if I should just delete Instagram.
Dear reader, apparently I did not delete that note. I just found it while looking for something else, and here it is unedited. The lack of typos is not normal for me, and I can only assume my intense concentration to LOOK NORMAL NO LOOK CREATIVE LOOK WRITERLY fueled my accuracy.
This is me typing. I just scrunched my nose awkwardly. This is a very dumb thing I’m doing. I’m filming myself typing a bunch of nonsense. Why do I even feel the need to type real words? I don’t know. I just do.
I’m looking seriously at my words on the screen. Wow. Such a writer. Much writing. This is ridiculous. But it’s a part of the game. I have to play it if I want to land anywhere on the scoreboard. I wonder what other people are typing in these videos? I wonder if they’re typing real words, or if it’s just bullshit lorem ipsum kinda crap. Lorem ipsum sit amet. Non dolor? I’m not sure. I just know it’s based on Cicero.
Okay, this is another attempt at typing while recording. At least I can laugh at myself. Now I’m wearing my wedding ring, which I don’t think really shows up on camera. All it’s doing is squeezing the life out of my fat fingers. I actually typed fart fingers there for a second. Ha.
Okay. Now my shirt is buttoned. Look how professional I look. How put together. What they don’t suspect is that I’m sitting here in gym shorts and slippers with this dress shirt. Because I am a slob. A weird, slobby, slob slob slob. It probably looks weird to type the same word over and over again, so I shouldn’t do that.
Bow chicka bow wow. This time I’m rocking out to some killer tunes. Except I’m not. I’m just wearing headphones while I’m typing. This feels so silly. It’s such weird world we live in. My head is bopping along to the music that isn’t there. My face is serious. The coffee mug is in frame. Crap, I forgot to bob my head there for a second. I guess now I’m not bobbing head. If I start again, I won’t be on the same beat and my ruse will be exposed. So now I’m just typing with the fury of a thousand tiktokkers. Do you double that K? I’m not sure.
Edit this right here. And add this too. Now I’m editing. I guess. I used the mouse for a minute, and then I started typing. I guess I read something and it gave me an idea. Realism!
Okay. Time to get down. To business. The defeat. The puns. Oh my god, apparently I can’t type under pressure. I just flubbed that last sentence a million times and had to smash the backspace key a bazillion times. Let’s get down to business. To defeat. The PUNS. Okay, that was redemptive, even if it wasn’t terribly satisfying. Even if it’s a stupid thing to type. Thank god nobody will ever see this.
Okay. Here we go again. Green shirt now. Buttoned up. I’m typing again. I’m typing about nothing. ABout something. I’m typing about the typo I just made but have made the bold decision NOT to fix it. So brave. So courageous. Hey, I spelled that right. Courageous. I’m so proud of me. Me and my spelling. Me and my double spaces at the end of every sentence like a boomer.
