Writer's write for varied reasons, here are a few reasons to stew in juices and hot apple cider mull over with your daily brew full of the good old brew-ha-ha!
Often writer's write to give accolades, pay homage, copy, reflect, in the style of one of the great writers of the day, or the past or present. Wherever this soul connection comes from it often comes from the Heart of The Matter (Graham Greene) or is found in country of origin boastful Pride in being akin to the likes of the great writers du payee. Doth not pride goeth before the fall? Yet as we are idealists as writers and are mostly invincable. Finding one's voice is heady stuff like finding oneself rubbing literary shoulders with the likes of Margaret Atwood, Gabriele Roy, Margaret Lawrence, WO Mitchel, Roy McDonald, Leonard Cohen, Dan Needles, William Shakespeare, not to mention all those previously mentioned on my intro blog page (you know who you are; well, don't you?). And the circle of life like the friends of writers circle just naturally widens a little each day like the spreadsheet of time well-spent on this sedentary hobby or career (may not have a choice here) of the permanently afixed to the keyboard writer, a writer/s writer. Knowing as I do now the ins and outs of the revolving door never meeting the ground floor opportunity, never taking the elevator past the glass ceiling to the white collared room of Madmen in Gucci loafers. (There is absolutely nothing wrong with Gucci loafers, it is just a saying for us down on our writerly luck, I'm sure you'd understand if a silver spoon wasnt bred in your mouth).
Of course a much bigger reason than finding and flocking with birds of the same feather is the inordinate need for the writer to REDEEM him/herself at all costs. The redemption process is like a Saturn V rocket staging process. If you want me to discuss Ares VI rockets I will have to get permission from NASA. So writers in turn venerate, honour and esteem their readership audience with many kind sayings and free offers, much like any business. The readership is the supreme reason for writers to write (usually) in the first place. We are not writing just to think that no one would never chance to come across our words. Writers want to be, beyond all else, understood, in one form or another. It is, after all, a form of communication (Hello). One can only truly redeem themselves by this naked honesty to the pen and self, and then, hopefully, the writer will cash in if the need is real enough and the promo zealous enough.
It is very important to realize that the potential readership is highly educated, literary, arts and letters type persons. This being said, may I take liberties to comment on the state of writing today? One does not need, as a writer, any further entanglement of any kind, no encumbrance, or snares to the feet by those only interested in hounding writers as another occupation. As writers are vulnerable, and some choose only to read up and coming writers not with bated breath excitment at having accidentally stumbled into some really interesting reading, but rather take it upon themselves the mantel of finding anything illegal in the writer's context. A good case for the Agatha Christie Novel: Ten Little Writers or Then There Were None (Writers). Once a lawyer gets through the initial pounce the cat smiling proudly having caught the poor little mouse, (mouse represented here is actually the writer, the lawyer, the cat, hope this analogy is understood).
Yes, it would be a wise investment for a writer to take a good course in simply copyright law and the art of legalize and enfringement liabiliity. Nothing can be worse to deflate the ego than a civil or criminal lawsuit on the uninformed and thereby ignorant beginner writer than the slap and sting of torte law. Please understand that hopefully not all your readership is going to be lawyers following your everyword with a suit similar to the ambulancechaser, although it may seem this way. We are a nation of fault-finders, frivolous lawsuiters, and gossips, keen on destroying fine young writer's careers before they begin to take flight. Writers should use disclaimers on their blogs, etc., to protect themselves two-ways; from the lawsuits pending from copying others, and from others stealing their hard earned work. It is definitiely a double-edged sword, and double endemnity does not hold in Canada. Any suggestions on how to universalize this procedure or by making torte-friendly sites would be greatly appreciated! (said in humble hindsight).
It is always good to have on hand a few beer chasers to down the many sorrows of which pen is err to and which only pen can do, and as well as the thousand errors or more learned hands-on and the hard way; you "earned them bruisers". Wear your tat-bruises with pride, and rememberance: don't do that again!
Protect yourself writers, the time is indeed at hand and mouth, and you never know where the next online "pal" finds something to complain and sue about; how do you think the rich stay rich and in the top three percent? They arent as generous with their billions unless unto themselves. So beware writers; one must watch and be constantly viligant about every single word written. This is due to the many pending and potential lawsuits which could be your last draft(not talking the liquid variety here) and usually waiting like a lady in some locked desk to send out the lawyers letter. This of course reeks of censorship and/or excessive copyright scrutiny if not a police state. Especially if the writers are not, as yet, professionals.
As far as censorship goes; writers should never fear to tread where no man fears to tread because the treads are wearing thin and there really is, after all nothing new uder the sun. If you quote a borrowed word, you add footnotes and the orginating web address. This is not infringing on copyright then. No more on this topic, I can feel a burning sensation already. On to the next topic!
Being a writer means one is seeking a crack at redemption. Redeeming oneself in the writerly fashion is a way of setting right the many wrongs, the many rejection letters, the slowly building angst in a writer's soul, hell-bent on recovering not only unfinished business but finishing business and putting it away for the night, and finally getting much needed rest for long hours at minimal (if that) pay.
It is all in stride the slings and arrows the courgeous writer faces daily paralleling the scaling of Mount Rushmore with pickaxe alone. Not impossible, just terribly trepidatious and slightly inspiring for the weak-of-heart professions. Think battle mode of Goliah versus David or Modor taking on the Hobbits, Star Trek crew taking on the Klingon Nation. All come short of the glory of the writer's true pinnacle; a published writer with readership numbers to prove it; the writer's litmus test; the Pulitzer Prize, or someother big literary reward. This helps, but the true satisfaction for a writer is in the fact that someone appreciates their hard-won efforts, all the rest is icing on the cake of having "made it" as a writer.
Writers have, for many years had their dreams to sustain them and help them when they finally mount their fine steeds to the top of Mount Bookdeal. Writers envision a utopian world and others expound upon it, so writers are similar to designers in this way, and are on the forefront of everything new and fashionable. However, this being said, writers also tend to "niche" into a space which is highly defineable, and constraining, not able to break free of the shackles which describe their style and genre. How writers describe fine unicorned visions is not actually a case of whether or not unicorns do in fact exist, but whether or not unicorns are described in any detail, or are briefly sketched, in which historical time frame. Thus the branding of the unicorn novel or what is popular today, the gothic vampire novel. The popularity demanding the turn of the head of the writer to become merely popular if he/she would like supper tonight.
This need of writers to create elababorate on fantasy made reality by the mind adjusting to seeing the vision as real. The writer can become quite god-like in the ability to create worlds from a few strokes of a keyboard. This enpowerment is wholly publishing industry-driven. If there was not a JK Rowlings there certainly would be soon enough. The public was ready, and they ate it up, giving the industry the much needed boost it needed in the dried-up computer age. New markets need to be found if publishers are going to survive. The writer too, must trade one vice for another to live another day. There is not much artist flexibility or licence when it comes to survival; it is "do or die". This is the state of the art of writing today. Art writing has gone to the back shelves of the unconscious while commercially popular books have taken full reign; for now. Tables turn, tides change, the world does flipflop. But can the writer afford to wait til his/her style becomes "the style genre" of the moment? Doubtful. And with all visions the mind can conjure; the mind does not recognize the difference between fantasy and reality so says leading psychologists; so how and why do our conscious minds recognize how to portray a work of fiction? Why should we, we should continue to fantasize without regards to reality as reality sooner or later catches up with the dreamer. Did this not use to be the other way around? Must be we are living in the negative gamma world already, thanks to the insidious partical seperator; that particle smasher of hopes and dreams. Lets hope fantasy wins, unless it looks like a day at the Playboy mansion. Most feminist writers would indeed concur.
Redemption needs martrys, and one has had to suffer sin to be redeemed. That's why writers need a patron saint of redemption, and I think that would be Saint Needmoresleep Punchkeys of the Cloistered Late-Night at the Writer's All Night Cafe: Online 24 Blogger help for the Writer in Denizen Dweller residence of the photon screamers; witnessed in effigy every Friday night at your local watering hole establishment, crying for all to hear "Redeem yourseles" and then like a flash of the penlight, back to heaven awash with angelic hosts proclaiming; "Yes, we saved another writer, by giving them an awkward moment of spelling or grammatical erro feed. That's what happens when without the patience of a writer one succumbs to fast postings". With shame comes redemption, and all writers need redemption. They after all, have too many late nights where evil lurks close to the hand that bringeth forth evil or good. Pay heed writer to the vices of the writer and you'll be just fine says SAint SeeNoHearNoSayNobutwriteaboutit Angel/writer patron saint of writers who never get it right.
Perhaps, you, as a newbie, ?newbeant, or nascent nubile for the nile writer would like to fashion yourself after a writer that suits your style; your panache. No pancake makeup can remove that clown's face you are about to don. So you think you are the next Tom Clancy or Kenneth Folet to name but a few?
So as you and the other thousand million other clowns mimic the likes of Stephen King, or other top box office in the sales department of chapters and Amazon. You could even cash in on this zeal for flavour of the month club of writer wannabes (dont do this) by exposing other wannabe writers like yourself to a cheaper version of the Vanity Press. This drama unfolds when Buba knocks at your home converted to Kinkos with his baseball bat, and he doesnt want to go to Yankee stadium to bat a few for the old jipper either. YOu gyped him and he wants his exacting pound of revenge. So buyer and seller beware. The mean streets are only getting meaner with each starving writer thinking of ways to turn a yankee dollar in the new economy. Who says talk is cheap?
For some writers, writing is better than sex. There is a huge market for trash talk. Just not wholly up my alley. Thank god. I'm fifty...need I say more?
Writers recreate worlds where none has existed before, or shouldnt have if they tend to protect copyrighted material. However, all art is borrowed form somewhere, and should be or we would not have much to talk about in art criticism. We borrow, like a cup of sugar to return any part of the sugar bowl which may have been third party sugar. Keep it arms length and change every third word and there you go, Bob's your uncle, your homefree and free from a bad smell of torte law.
Writer's give meaning to past pain and down on their luck horrible experience. As a tool goes, writing is second to none for those in need of a good purge or two. What could be better than using third person when trying to get something off one's chest? The need to cleanse and heal has long been known in psychotherapy and is encouraged, as well as it should be, in art therapy classes.
Where there is a pain, you'll find a writer and a self-help guru right there trying to help in their own paypal way a way to resolve it. Writers must there fore RESOLVE THEMSELVES. One of the first things learned is that writers must get residual angst, commonly referred to as negative emotion. The emotions if allowed to fester become like pus-boils on the chest, distorting the milk of human kindness to sour dough bread yeast. Writers being a very sensitive lot, are "all about: the pain, the hurt, the repression. Please study the Stravinsky model from the Actors/Writers studio to understand this primal pain, etc.
The Writer/Artists need to write is releasing the writer from themselves, the bent ego which took to pen to self-medicate. Makes one feel free to understand how powerfully-driven this drive to RESOLVE or RELEASE the negative past emotions of the writer. However, like a word junking the writer soon finds more painful issues to write about, mull about and basically obsess about. Likening this effect to instant gratification, and you have the "Medium is the Message" of Marshall McLuluan's. Yes, writing is all about feelings and it can also, be about being an instant cash cow for the popular and professional writer. Have you noticed how much "wierder" and "wierdierer" Stephen King premises for his novels have become of late? After diving into a simple story about a prom queen Carrie, he proceeds onto all kinds of oddball oddies once the lid of the subconsicous repressed King came popping off the top of the horror maestro's head. Scary thought. That's the idea. Scarer and scarerer. No end in sight. How will I and my fear of deadmen in closets compete on the same fear level. I have got to get more fear, so I find fear. Cape Fear, any fear, fear for fear sake. When will this end? That's why I don't "do" horror, there is no end to how much the creeping seeping evil will invade my relatively "safe" world of the "here and now". Plus it creeps "me out", and I don't like to be "creeped out". Actually I did, in my day, but it is too much blood and guts now. I cant watch the opening credits of Dexter without a quick remote switcheroo to something safe, tried and true. Am I boring? You betcha!
Exactly where is a person going to find any good in all that bad like the occupation of writing? So for writers and anyone else who has written personal diaries, etc, the need to regurgatate and lick old wounds is a lifelong fetish. So, luckily for the writer the pocketbook does not suffer like the soul, people paying scads for a peer into the potentially endless stream of income of bottled up hurt (also known as latent s and m repressed kundalini snakehead lizard king...oh I found Jim Morrison!) the endless revolving mobiuus link of writerly angst and ennui which can continue ad infinitum until the end of Mastercard's reign and subsequent chokehold; fight, flight or write, your choice, choose wisely; choose to do the right stuff; Write Wrongs or Wrong Rights but Write Clown, Write!
To write is to writing what music is to musicians, embellishment, making the score ring with harmony of complex variety. And to write is to writing as art is to painting, expressing ones soul on canvas, or page to create an unique New York moment in the hurly burly world that zips by in a New York minute.
Writing should empower, enliven, and engage the unengageable and marry the unmarried into wedded bliss if not just for a Las Vegas night that stays in Vegas forever, a place where a writer's art beguiles and attracts legions of those like minded to pursue their own dreams, visions and quests.
Writers unfinished business "it's just business" needs are huge in the need to supplant the east river with more than just cement overshoes. Rather to spread the truth, by finding ways around the drone of boredom from endless Canadian winters that never end with too much syrupy maple sugar made from molasses from the deep south. Truly Canadians survived many a winter injesting sap from the maple tree, when all other food sources dried up. As survivors writers know the bare bones of survival mode and can do any other profession proud when it comes to attrition rate; writers never die, they just let other's continue to jabberwoky away about life's endless foibles, trifles and hypocracies. Writer's are for the most part, honest about their writing, unless they are deceptive. The truth will always out. Truth is an outie obviously, maybe abit passive-aggressive at times, but who is not in this day and age? So writers who appear are often friendly for a reason; they have to be friendly to survive as writers. And so much more friendly then other professions when it comes to competition. No one really wants to be a writer, they are more or less forced into the occupation via sweat equity.
Writer's unions can attest to the new world order of the writer's quandry today, with the amazing amounts of bloggers and wannabe's out there, the competition isnt going away anytime soon. All writers given free and equal access to the freedom of speech etched in stone and constitution. Writers are basically free to say what is on their mind in an uncensored universe of democratic ideal. If there is anyone in this room who knows where this is, please call me stat!
Often some writers use the net and other media to proseltize which means to expound and convert others to their way of thinking, be it religion or philosophy. In this case I say to these proseltizers; take an alkaseltzer; it will last longer than your career soon to be iggied. One thing the intelligent readership loathes is someone force-feeding diatribe down the throat without warning. Cod liver oil tastes better than that! So be smart; dont do the proseltzer thing newbies, it is a fatal error of the worse kind!
Also writers write to contribute any worthwhile human story, or antedote (not always appreciated when mundane and chronic) as a remanent of self. Like saying "I was here" or "Kilroy was here" some thing that base, but we all need to feel someone will remember us when we are gone, or at least try to, or happen to chance upon some long dead words from a dead person who once was as alive as you or what I used to be before I became a writer! Before i transgress, or transpire or forget what it is I want to write about (short term memory already? gheesh) I want to write down all trivial, innane and wholly cutesy sayings before I forget them. Isnt that nice of me? Bet you can't wait!
As a writer, I hopefully continue to refine the written line, elegantly continuing like the bent swagger of Tennessee Williams with white on white dress attire, and effected speech a way of being a poet/writer with all it's writerly magic arts. Writing akin to incantations of various sorts whereby there is power in the written word. Take the Bible for example (not proseltizing here you may think so) or whatever religiously significant book out there; writing as power.
Those who write know this and that is probably why they continue to write as I do not see any form of power coming in the terms of renumeration for writers today. There has to be another motivating force; it is the act of writing. Getting up each day at the crack of dawn. Seeking purpose in the dream and schemes you have sketched out in your mind. Drawing the preliminary outline, the flowchart "bubble" of ideas to spring forth gems that could one day; change the world forever. And if there is anything wrong with this, I think I will go to the Binder Twine Festival in Kleinburg and gossip about Stephen King being my cousin or simply go back to my gopher clerk job and just have a very long nap but look like I am working at my old redundant job.
jj 22 11 09
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