Masculine Prose
2026-01-06
Today I am six months nicotine-free.
I never thought I'd make it this far, honestly. Every day it gets easier, but there are still many triggers. It's crazy how much I notice smoking in media I watch. Every time I see someone smoking a cigarette, I get a bit envious. Soon enough, though, I forget all about it. Thankfully as time has gone on, staying off of nicotine has gotten easier, not harder.
I'm proud of myself for getting this far. The back half of 2025 was a pivotal time for me. I got an exercise routine figured out, wrote a lot more, started publishing here, wrote short stories for submissions, quit smoking, and feel like I've been becoming healthier each day. I haven't had a mood episode in almost four months. It seems that I've made more progress in digging myself out of all of those holes. Now that I can see more of the light, I only want to go higher.
My discipline with writing has reached new highs. My goal is to get comfortable with around 2,000 words a day. To be clear, this is 2,000 good words a day, ones that survive rounds of revisions. Lately what I've noticed is that I can pump out a good amount of words, but I've also been cutting a lot of them out once they get written down. Usually I realize that I can cut many sentences in half without losing anything. I'll also cut entire sentences—sometimes entire paragraphs—because there's no purpose in the overall piece after writing them.
Fortunately, I've gotten past my pride. I don't feel bad about cutting large amounts of words out during revisions. The thing I've said over and over again: the best writers are the best revisers. If you don't know how to pull out that red marker, you aren't going to make it. I might be picky with my prose, but I think that's one of my most important attributes.
Recently, I downloaded software to get totally legally obtained audiobooks so that I could listen to them while doing walks at the gym. A few friends and I have a book club going and for this month we're doing Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. It's been a great time listening to the audiobook so far this month. Kuang has a very mature prose style, which is great considering that she's still in her twenties. There's a bit of envy I feel with her mainstream success, especially considering that she's around my age. I will say, however, that she's written a lot more than I have and started taking writing seriously way earlier than me, so it's not a fair comparison when put rationally.
Despite my childish feelings, the book has still been a pleasure to get through. It's nice that there's a novel published recently that I like. Writers like Kuang give me confidence for the future of our generation, and I hope that I can be recognized in that same light. Gen Z male literature is scant for reasons that I intimately understand.
Gen Z guys have many other priorities outside of producing works of literature. Many Gen Z guys are more focused on getting their lives in order by establishing the basics. They want good careers and to secure a good future, even if their outlook is pessimistic. Because of that, the whole notion of the romantic bohemian male writer a la Burroughs or Kerouac is way out of fashion. Most people my age look back on guys like that and see them as either big fat phonies or as spiritual predecessors to today's Performative Male. You know, the guy who can be found outside of coffee shops drinking green matcha lattes and pretending to read Simone Beauvoir.
The spirit of guys sticking shit out in that restrained masculine prose is a fading archetype, which is mostly due to the compounding effects of industrialization. Guys don't need or want to know how to fix stuff around the house anymore because, well, most of them don't own one. We're all too busy puttering around on our computers or phones consuming media by the terabyte. Well, truthfully, that's just a cosmopolitan male of today. There's guys out there still getting their hands in the mud and living that hardened kind of life. The problem is that they don't write about it or even get written about.
That's my lane. I want to give those men a voice.
After all, I'm one of them.