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The
Writer's Life
by marriah,
17th May 2001.
As
a writer, I can only convey that which is
true.
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I am a writer. I am
not one who writes. There is a difference. I do not define myself by
what I do. We may say that a person who digs ditches is a ditch
digger, and then associate an entire identity to him as a member of
that profession. Similarly, we may say that a person who drives cabs
is a cab driver, and then associate identity characteristics with
that profession. But writing is not something I do. It is not a
hobby, a game, a profession, or a struggle. It is what I am.
This means that I cannot write something without having what
I write transform my entire emotional, intellectual, and physical
environment on the spot, the instant I write it. This profoundly
limits me as other writers are not limited. I cannot write fiction
because I cannot create fake characters. I cannot create fake
situations. I can only contemplate that which is real, and bring
myself to mentally and emotionally inhabit someone – either a person
or personality type – that is very real. I cannot write that which
does not correspond to my present state of mind. I have no
versatility as most writers have. I cannot write poetry, science
fiction, horror and romance without mentally and emotionally living
through the events that I create. Conversely, I cannot understand
something that I have physically, emotionally, psychologically
experienced until I write about it. Thus, I experience perpetual
delayed reaction to all of life. All moments are frozen in time to
me until I begin to integrate them through words. Then I experience
them piece by piece.
This limitation in "the moment" gives
me the seeds for much greater freedom outside of that moment. I can
pour myself into another person’s mind and soul by breaking them
down with my thoughts and words, and then reconstructing myself as
them. Similarly, I can deconstruct myself and then recreate a new
personality in a single evening. I can carefully observe passersby
or the interactions of friends and family, and by breaking their
motions down to the smallest pieces and reconstructing them, I can
understand them more fully than they understand themselves. In my
"lonely" hours in solitude, I can play many different roles and
reenact what I have observed.
This makes me slow to act,
slow to know, slow to think, and slow to live. But, everyone moves
around much faster than me, making authentic interaction with them
close to impossible unless they take the time to sit down and listen
to what I have to share. Thus, writing is what saves me from a life
of loneliness as I am forced to put into words for some unknown
audience what I have seen, thought, and experienced. But, as I live
through my writing, I experience greater richness than some people
will ever know, because everything is more real than real to me. All
thoughts, feelings, experiences, memories, can be frozen, perfectly
recalled and experienced again as I approach them from different
angles. Some people go through life and never stop to notice
anything. Others stop to notice and then forget. I leave fragments
of myself everywhere, and carry fragments of everything else around
in me so that I am perpetually stopped. I am a worm that stretches
itself into infinity without breaking, or regenerates upon snapping,
and ends up facing itself on the other side, forming a perfect
circle.
I am that circle, of flowing water, that needs a
slick river bed to stay clean and fresh as it swirls round and
round. If others stop by, I welcome them to go for a swim and get
carried away by my current. But do not fear. I put them right back
where they started so that they can continue on their journey, just
a bit wiser than before. My cleansing waters purify them, as they do
me.
I hold in the palm of my hand an oracle, that knows the
future by studying the present and the past, bestowing insight onto
all those who are troubled. By integrating myself with everything
around me, I see the intrinsic nature of all things. Thus I know
their value and their direction.
The words that I write do
not cause joy, pain, or suffering. They reflect it. They allow the
reader a clear looking glass so that he too can look through and see
what I see, know what I know. They integrate the reader with the
writer’s soul, mind, and heart, creating a bridge between all things
so that the infinite circle becomes a sphere and all is connected. I
don’t play with words, putting them in odd, crazy, original and cute
combinations to inspire glee. I polish a mirror made of letters
that, like a series of connecting mirrors in a cave, captures the
sunlight from a small opening and magnifies it a thousand fold so
that the dark passages are brilliantly illuminated and bathed in
light. The darkness causes fear because it is the unknown. But the
writer knows the systems that are hidden, waiting to be known,
because he first experienced them, or knows them well enough to love
them. He has tunneled and excavated, so that the intricacies of the
world are revealed to all, thus eliminating fear. The writer’s
message: I bring love and hope, because once you see what I have
seen, I am sure that the world will be reborn as I have been.
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| Member Ratings |
| Member |
Date |
Overall |
Agree? |
Writing? |
Enjoyment? |
| tjodray |
17 May
2001 |
Absolutely
sensational |
Strongly
Agree |
Great
Style |
Standing
Ovation |
| ritawrites |
18 May
2001 |
Absolutely
sensational |
Strongly
Agree |
Don't touch
it! |
Standing
Ovation |
| I agree with so much
here. |
| robertsloan2 |
18 May
2001 |
Excellent |
Neutral |
Great
Style |
Sensational |
| Interesting
viewpoint. You have a rich inner life and a strong voice that's your
own. I generally enjoy the company of reflective people but I had to
laugh at the point you admitted that you don't take leaps of
imagination into romance, horror, science fiction. Fall in love,
then you'll write a romance. You write after the fact, you write
from your own experience interpretively. I can't give you a
technique to open the doors of imagination and suspect instead that
yours soars intensely toward the immediate. But romance as a genre
isn't necessarily as far from the everyday as the weird flights of
fancy I take at times. I put Neutral only because there's nothing to
agree or disagree with there: it is a vivid, evocative self portrait
you've written. You sound as if you have a very joyous life swimming
the wordstream. I respect that. - Robert A. Sloan, author of Raven
Dance |
| charles-travel-tales |
30 Jul
2001 |
Excellent |
Agree |
Great
Style |
n/a | |
| The
writer’s message: I bring love and hope, because once you see
what I have seen, I am sure that the world will be reborn as I
have been.
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