Diary: Needing to Read to Write Better

Why am I so uninspired?  It must be because of so many hours spent at my dead-end job.  I do nothing constructive.  I suppose I should start writing things that I like instead of this pointless drivel.  I can't get anywhere with this.  I need to get into the same spirit I was in during the school year.  Ah, what memorable satires I wrote!  If only my mood allowed me . . . 

I should read Catch-22 again.  There is something in that book that I missed, that is very important to me right now, which I am on the verge of discovering.  I feel as though that secret is coming to me, and that I must experience something very soon to discover exactly what it is.  

I was thinking today (a rare moment indeed, considering the brainless idiocy that I earn money for) that engineers are actually somewhat admirable.  They are (or at least should be) clever, adaptable, and intelligent, yet unafraid to get their hands dirty on some greasy machine.  In fact, they love it.  I, on the other hand, love to get down and dirty with words, twist them into my purposes, stretch them to fit my needs.  Language is an invention like any other, and is open to innovations and improvements.  People love my satirical lexical humour.  So do I.  I should not be afraid to delve into the bottom of the sewer of language, where all of the interesting things are.  I will find out what makes it tick.  I will dismantle it and reassemble it, over and over again, with the greatest attention to the smallest detail, and work in my own improvements.  

For example, Poe's stories are in drastic need of improvement, if not grammatically, but in terms of plot.  Or rather, his lyric genius must be extricated from his fantastically unjust stories.  How barbaric of him to have the narrator of The Pit and the Pendulum survive his ordeal because of a timely rescue lasting an entire two lines!  He (Poe, that is) might as well have roasted his tale over an open flame and devoured it whole, or battered it mercilessly with an axe, rather than ending it that way.  Improving it could be well worth the effort.  

I should also reread [famous author, redacted], and read some of it for the first time.  Soon I will discover the flaw if there is one.  The same goes for Heller.  Is there a flaw in either?  I just loved those books . . .  [obscure author] is a bit too irrational for my liking.  He does have a lot to say, though... I should get reading!