Jim van den Bos
If I print out the poems and stories I have written and published on my site, the book will have 178 pages. That, to me, is crazy. I still remember how I started writing poetry; I had a surreal dream that I thought was funny. A woman floating higher and higher above the earth’s surface—noticing, witnessing, eventually overseeing—to finally come to the conclusion that all she saw was simply shit. What I had written from that dream made me laugh, and that laugh sparked something within me I didn’t know I was capable of enjoying.
I wrote small and innocent things first, keeping them hidden. Until I was at a party with an open stage and very warm and welcoming people. A girl sang, another guest danced freely. And then I was summoned on stage. I remember watching my cigarette trembling and realizing I was. I made it through some of the early poems and was welcomed with applause. Polite, I thought—until after, when people came up to me. They raised my confidence by quite a bit. I remember cycling away with a smile on my face.
Fresh confidence doesn’t automatically mean that the rest comes easy. I optimistically made this website and was ready to live my new life as a writer. But then I hit a patch of the old writer’s block. For weeks—maybe even months—I couldn’t find the inspiration, and with that, I lost that new confidence again. Stuff that I managed to churn out was, in my eyes, absolute shit. I couldn’t get over that bump. I still remember that feeling whenever I hit a snag nowadays. Luckily, I know now that it’s temporary.
One conversation with a friend got me out of it. We were having a beer somewhere. As friends do, we were gossiping, updating, analyzing—and after that, just talking about random things. My writing popped up, and I laid bare that I couldn’t write anything anymore: the dramatic reasons behind it and the fact that it was really bothering me. He thought about it for a moment and said: “Whatever you put out there, it isn’t yours anymore. It’s the reader’s.” He meant that I shouldn’t worry about opinions—it’s their interpretation of my work anyway. That freed me, and a few days later I wrote again, this time at high speed.
Because I had felt a lot of the ‘being a writer’ mentality is also putting your mind to it, and because I like a challenge, I gave myself the mission of writing and publishing a poem every two days for a year. One day to write, one day to edit and publish. Even though I didn’t achieve the 180-ish poems, I did achieve a lot in that year. I learned that inspiration is literally everywhere. That it can hit you like a brick in the most uncomfortable moments. Forgetting that inspiring thing is so incredibly frustrating—like finding money on the street and then losing it a moment later. (Now I have 50-plus pages of nonsensical notes—and growing.)
My friend was right—it was really the audience’s responsibility to perceive my musings in the way they like. I presume some people hate it. Luckily, they keep quiet. The first really surprising response was a lady from America. She put a very short message about how she was brought to tears reading. I was so surprised—a poem I thought was just okay had made someone cry. It truly wasn’t mine anymore. It was hers now.
Now, years later, I am grateful for any responses. But mostly, I am happy I write. It helps me be me. And when it’s not flowing—when brick walls block the words, when my thoughts do not line up—I am okay. I have stubbornness. I have diligence. I have the relaxation needed to continue as a writer. To grow. Even if, for some weeks, the growing only happens to my folder of unfinished pieces.
I know I will randomly pick those pieces up and make something of it—just like I did once with a random dream. 178 pages ago.