Perhaps, as writers, the question is not 'what will you create,' but rather, 'when you are gone, what will create you?'
DEATH OF A NOVELIST
My story, such as it is, has a once upon a time quality to it. I hadn't sought to create a legend, but nor had a believed to see myself one. If that were the sum total of my life's ambitions, my account should stand at half; truly enough for any man, one would think.
This is a forced foray into what has been, but I will not forget my objective, or my allegiances. The past has never been my friend, though God knows I've taken its cold comfort before. When the fires of the present are banked for the night, let it stand as a lesson for men of no vision: there is no flame strong enough to chase the starlit shivers from your spine.
I have carved my empire into the living rock of a million willing, intellectual minds, and for that I beg forgiveness. Then, it was enough to chisel my name into the faces of my critics; now, I find I would tear down every monument to my arrogance with my bare hands, were I given a choice. Granite may wear into the oblivion I almost seek, but I have no such respite. My words will endure even unto the end of an age: every lie, every boast, every curse; my false prophets shall inherit the earth.
In the end, even the strongest of us come to this. Not just my creativity I poured into them, but me: personality and soul. Their lives were at the mercy of my pen, their fates bound to every twist of my little black notebook, until they were more me than I was. 'Till at last, the children of the mind have toppled the King from his throne, and put up a Paper doll in his place. My bastard progeny walk in a million pages, with my eyes in their head, and my lies on their tongue. Never would a sane man wish to say the things I have said, but they have said it for me.
I am a new man, created anew to the world, and represented by those I brought to life. No longer am I a real man, but am given to the whole world to be read and pondered like the books I have given them. I have no more stories to put in my place; will I, too, be studied?
Now that I am the sum of my parts, it becomes very important not to go gently into that good night. My own raging is done as it should be done: briefly, for I am searching for some way to be myself before the end. There are no noble works to be done, for I have lost my free heart, my free forehead, and am only a sinking star in the west. I will strive with gods no longer, but only seek that which is myself, uncreated and almost lost.
Seek me where the flowers have no name. If a rose called by any other is no less sweet, why should I nameless man be any less that; a man? Now that I have written the names to a thousand lives, I find there is only one I do not care for. Now that I have seen the value of names, I know that there is only one thing that holds true. We seek within ourselves, not for a true name to be known by, but, as ourselves, to be truly known. Even without a name.
Fin.
I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say right now, so I can't really help you. Just say what you mean to say out loud and then write down whatever you've just said.
that's part of the point of it; he's an old-style intellectual, taken too far, someone who's become the 'intelligent' stereotype. It's almost less of a monolouge and more of an essay.
