Why do you write? Seriously, think about it for a minute. It's an important question. Most of us probably aren't paying the bills with it. It likely isn't earning us widespread fame, literary cachet or the ardent affection of numerous members of the opposite sex. In all probability, we're hemorrhaging cash to get our manuscripts to markets where we think they'd fit, collecting kindly worded rejection letters from said markets, and badgering friends and family into grudgingly perusing our latest efforts. All of this begs the question with which we began: Why?You know the answer, of course. You do it because you love it. You do it for those wonderful moments when everything clicks, when your creative vision suddenly comes clear and you have an uninterrupted chunk of free time and you feel that you've known your characters since you were in short pants and the transitions come out seamlessly and everything just flows. You do it for that joy, that delight, that sheer exaltation.
Not that you feel it all the time. For me, it can be as rare as a vegetarian at The National Championship Barbeque Cookoff. Often it's hack-and-slash, cutting back distractions, pruning away extraneous ideas, slicing up overly verbose sections. It's dirty, difficult and deeply un-fun work. And here lies the central paradox, the conundrum in the rationale: The very love that compels us to write in the first place keeps us writing even when it's absent. Or especially when it's absent. Delight buoys craft like passion does a marriage -- in patient tenacity rather than ubiquity, in the promise that past joy brings for its future presence.
(Picture: CC 2008 by Stephen Poff)
8 comments:
What if you write because you're compulsive and neurotic, and only the process of writing in a tempest of furious absolution can exorcise those demons welling up inside?
Not that this is my case, personally. I write EXCLUSIVELY for profit, thank you very much.
I remember writing like that. I still do sometimes. It's just that, well, that sort of writing is raw and unpolished and chaotic.
If you accept that the goal of the written symbol is communication, that pile of pulsing, bouncing hyperactive emotion does not work.
We have to learn to craft our output, to polish our tenses, to focus our intensity.
I write because I am in love with words and language and the way things sound. I also write because I don't think on my feet quickly enough to be a public speaker.
Tony,
What if you write not only for accolades from others, but also to prove to yourself that you can, only you notice hours after you pushed the "Publish" button that there's a typo in the title and IT MAKES THE VOICES IN YOUR HEAD START SCREAMING AT YOU AGAIN?!?!!1!
This is, of course, entirely hypothetical ...
If you accept that the goal of the written symbol is communication, that pile of pulsing, bouncing hyperactive emotion does not work.
B.,
Yup. It always frustrates me when people say they write out of "self expression." Such stuff often ends up being boring and indulgent. If literature is about universal human experience, we should be trying to get into the heads of others, so to speak, not try to get them into ours.
I saw the typo. I hid it away in my heart to better cherish the mortality of the fount of golden knowledge. All the gods have feet of clay, etcetera.
Wait, are you talking about little old me?
Ha, well I just assumed that you were writing in a passionate frenzy... typos be damned! Anyway, you've have a pretty consistent record for having a nice blog, in both senses of the word. One typo just shows you're still human.
You are very, very kind, Tony. Alas, I compare my writing process to digging your way out of Alcatraz with a spoon.
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