So, What Do You Write?
I teach writing, so people naturally ask me if I write. What they really want to know is if I write for publication, and more specifically, if I write books. So when I tell them I work on some web sites for fun and that I blog, the expectation on their faces fades and I can see them put a mental strike through my name. Anybody can do those things - after all, anybody is doing those things, all the time. That's part of what the internet is for, right? I mean, after porn and Farmville, you've got every other guy between the ages of twenty and forty screaming from the nearest digital soapbox. It's all just gibbering in the nuthouse. Finishing a novel takes dedication and concentration, suffering and creativity. Blogging is just something that happens when you stay in for lunch and nothing much is happening on Facebook.
It's even worse when I explain that I don't even know where to begin when it comes to formal and lengthy projects. I really should have learned that honesty is its own punishment by now. Something very much like disdain rises behind their eyes but doesn't quite reach their lips. It's because I'm an adult, isn't it? An adult should know that they're in control of the rodeo, and anyone with an ounce of creativity should know what comes next. Except that I question the very idea of adulthood more with each passing year and I find myself wondering if I've ever known a "true adult" my entire life. That includes me. And I learned that I wasn't the all knowing and all powerful Oz once and for all two years ago.
Communication broke down for me both internally and externally in 2008, until I came to understand why postmodern literature is full of fragments and irreconcilable paradoxes, mad narrators and streams of consciousness. There is really no other way to come to terms once your world has come apart. Even fiction is affected when you've learned that the center will not hold. I've gotten done sweeping up many of the pieces of my life. Now I am faced with the task of what to do with them now that they're all in one place. I've got lists and ideas and something that might be called dreams but no real idea of what comes next. And while it might be nice to try to escape into a realm of fantasy, I live here - and anything great that might come out of me has to pass through where I am and where I've been. So, at times I write for fun and at other times, I write whatever chooses to come out. What's come out so far has been the literary equivalent of stomach-pumping: painful, messy, and bent on maintaining life.
Contrary to popular belief, writing isn't always grand or on the bestseller list or planned. Writing is also something that happens, like an accident or a freak storm or a drunken teenage caper that ends in sirens and jail. We didn't mean for it to turn out that way. We just showed up at the party and it all just happened... Writing is like a kiss that's stolen when you're promised to someone else - hot and impulsive, even a bit sloppy for all of the passion that's going into it. Writing doesn't always come out fully formed after a perfect and serene gestation. Most children are ordinary. Yes, even yours and mine. Some children are unlucky, and that can happen to anyone, as well.
Weaving words out of nothing isn't just for the record books or the wallet, or even the soul. The pen is as much about the mundane as it is about Quasimodo. It's as much about saving a poor sap's mind as anything else.
If I am a failure, it's not because I don't have an author bio page or a portfolio.
If I am a success, it's because I've come back to words again with the hope of writing something, somewhere, that means anything. After all that's happened, that hope is harder won than most people realize - and has more substance, for all its uncertainty, than half the self-help books I've ever seen. It is from that hope that all my words are born, and in that hope that any future projects will be conceived.
It's even worse when I explain that I don't even know where to begin when it comes to formal and lengthy projects. I really should have learned that honesty is its own punishment by now. Something very much like disdain rises behind their eyes but doesn't quite reach their lips. It's because I'm an adult, isn't it? An adult should know that they're in control of the rodeo, and anyone with an ounce of creativity should know what comes next. Except that I question the very idea of adulthood more with each passing year and I find myself wondering if I've ever known a "true adult" my entire life. That includes me. And I learned that I wasn't the all knowing and all powerful Oz once and for all two years ago.
Communication broke down for me both internally and externally in 2008, until I came to understand why postmodern literature is full of fragments and irreconcilable paradoxes, mad narrators and streams of consciousness. There is really no other way to come to terms once your world has come apart. Even fiction is affected when you've learned that the center will not hold. I've gotten done sweeping up many of the pieces of my life. Now I am faced with the task of what to do with them now that they're all in one place. I've got lists and ideas and something that might be called dreams but no real idea of what comes next. And while it might be nice to try to escape into a realm of fantasy, I live here - and anything great that might come out of me has to pass through where I am and where I've been. So, at times I write for fun and at other times, I write whatever chooses to come out. What's come out so far has been the literary equivalent of stomach-pumping: painful, messy, and bent on maintaining life.
Contrary to popular belief, writing isn't always grand or on the bestseller list or planned. Writing is also something that happens, like an accident or a freak storm or a drunken teenage caper that ends in sirens and jail. We didn't mean for it to turn out that way. We just showed up at the party and it all just happened... Writing is like a kiss that's stolen when you're promised to someone else - hot and impulsive, even a bit sloppy for all of the passion that's going into it. Writing doesn't always come out fully formed after a perfect and serene gestation. Most children are ordinary. Yes, even yours and mine. Some children are unlucky, and that can happen to anyone, as well.
Weaving words out of nothing isn't just for the record books or the wallet, or even the soul. The pen is as much about the mundane as it is about Quasimodo. It's as much about saving a poor sap's mind as anything else.
If I am a failure, it's not because I don't have an author bio page or a portfolio.
If I am a success, it's because I've come back to words again with the hope of writing something, somewhere, that means anything. After all that's happened, that hope is harder won than most people realize - and has more substance, for all its uncertainty, than half the self-help books I've ever seen. It is from that hope that all my words are born, and in that hope that any future projects will be conceived.