The Ink Shot archive
From 7 May 2012 until 7 December 2021 The Ink Shot was the blog of Marcus Baumgart, an itinerant café writer, designer of buildings, animal-lover and day-by-day battling creative. This blog celebrates the practice of writing in cafés, writing fiction and non-fiction and being creative in general.
Marcus struggles to motivate without the happy white noise of lively conversation and hissing espresso machines.
Excerpts and the Scene of the Day Job: A Juxtaposition
The Book of Disquiet: Excerpts
Page 82:
When I consider all the people I know or have heard of who write prolifically or who at least produce lengthy and finished works, I feel an ambivalent envy, a disdainful admiration, an incoherent mixture of mixed feelings. The creation of something complete and whole, be it good or bad – and if it’s never entirely good, it’s very often not all bad – yes, the creation of something complete seems to stir in me above all a feeling of envy.
And I, whose self-critical spirit allows me only to see my lapses and defects, I, who dare write only passages, fragments, excerpts of the non-existent, I myself – in the little that I write – am also imperfect. Better either the complete work, which is in any case a work, even if it’s bad, or the absence of words, the unbroken silence of the soul that knows it is incapable of acting.
Page 108:
Why should I care that no one reads what I write? I write to forget about life, and I publish because that’s one of the rules of the game.
Page 136:
I’m astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed.