Why Do You Write?
It makes you wonder, doesn't it, why we write? In what other job would any of us stay up all hours of the day and night sitting uncomfortably at a keyboard, slow-bleeding ideas, ignoring emails, TV, the heavy knock on the door writing jewels of entertaining stories and high points of wisdom appallingly doomed to become an addition in a folder of rejection letters and yet still continue to prostrate before blank screens and pages for salvation each day?
What other job would keep you working exhaustingly for 1 cent an hour once you add in all the writing time before publication (if you get one), with no health insurance, no vacation, and no holidays? What other job would keep you sitting in a chair breaking your back, keeping your fingers moving, your mind flowing and your bladder holding in four cups of tea until you get the last page written because you can't stop until you do lest you forget the perfect ideas you have right now?
I'm telling you, sometimes I have to truly wonder what's inside me that has kept me intimately connected to the pen or the keys on a daily basis since 1972 typing poems that get ignored, stories that go unwelcomed, books that go unsold, essays that disappear once they enter a mailbox, and query letters that go unanswered.
I used to save all my rejection letters but I stopped being a masochist (somewhat) years ago;there aren't enough moving vans in town to carry all the rejection-packed filing drawers.
I read that the book, If You Meet The Buddha On the Road, Kill Him, received 122 rejection letters in the 70's, and yet it is still selling well today. (I love that book). JK Rowling got turned down by 12 publishing companies. Aren't you glad you're not the person who turned her down?
A little rant and rage here as I sit trying to figure out a curious matter about a writer and its place in the univere and wonder, while I count my eight books and two booklets and look at my looseleaf folder full of stories and poems, why I'm not being sought after by agents or called up by Random House. So what is it? What is it in me and what is it in you that keeps us showing up with stories and tales of hope and woe to startle the blank page day after day after day, and if that weren't bad enough, we blog about what we have written because now its burdensomely upon us to market too -- what a reward --oh yuk!!
I take a sip of my tea, vanilla chai my cousin was kind enough to send me for Christmas last year, yeah I'm just getting around to it now, and relax just a little. Then it dawns on me, oh, I write because the tiny voice inside me has a lot to say and hates being tiny, it thinks all the time, it creates even when I'm sleeping. I can't keep that voice quiet no matter how much Cote de Rhone I down. In fact, give me half a glass of wine and I can write a 400 page book. Get me relaxed and my ideas flow like a pent up river released from a fallen tree obstructing its flow. I'm not a big drinker by any means but sometimes it takes the edge off the painful quest to find just the right word and eases the torment of my mind as it struggles to come up with an accurate expression of a mood or scene. No wonder most authors are drinkers.
In another vein though, it is the tension, the suspension, the excitement of an idea that keeps me writing without stopping even when I hear the onions sizzling in a frying pan and know that they have been sizzling too long. I'm not done with the sentence, the paragraph, the scene. I can't stop now. I have been seen saying words over and over so as not to forget them until I find a pen that works and write them on something tangible. In moments like this I want my mind crisp and sharp, alert and crackling. Don't try to relax me, you'll just tick me off. You should see my house. I have pens and pads everywhere. There is no remembering the perfect thought later on. You won't even remember that you had the perfect thought later on. No surprise there.
Sometimes, without warning, in a split second, eveything can make sense and I think, I'm made from the creative gene of God. What else was I made for except to be creative, right? The Bible says, first there was 'the word'. God's word was 'light. My word is 'write'.
What other job would keep you working exhaustingly for 1 cent an hour once you add in all the writing time before publication (if you get one), with no health insurance, no vacation, and no holidays? What other job would keep you sitting in a chair breaking your back, keeping your fingers moving, your mind flowing and your bladder holding in four cups of tea until you get the last page written because you can't stop until you do lest you forget the perfect ideas you have right now?
I'm telling you, sometimes I have to truly wonder what's inside me that has kept me intimately connected to the pen or the keys on a daily basis since 1972 typing poems that get ignored, stories that go unwelcomed, books that go unsold, essays that disappear once they enter a mailbox, and query letters that go unanswered.
I used to save all my rejection letters but I stopped being a masochist (somewhat) years ago;there aren't enough moving vans in town to carry all the rejection-packed filing drawers.
I read that the book, If You Meet The Buddha On the Road, Kill Him, received 122 rejection letters in the 70's, and yet it is still selling well today. (I love that book). JK Rowling got turned down by 12 publishing companies. Aren't you glad you're not the person who turned her down?
A little rant and rage here as I sit trying to figure out a curious matter about a writer and its place in the univere and wonder, while I count my eight books and two booklets and look at my looseleaf folder full of stories and poems, why I'm not being sought after by agents or called up by Random House. So what is it? What is it in me and what is it in you that keeps us showing up with stories and tales of hope and woe to startle the blank page day after day after day, and if that weren't bad enough, we blog about what we have written because now its burdensomely upon us to market too -- what a reward --oh yuk!!
I take a sip of my tea, vanilla chai my cousin was kind enough to send me for Christmas last year, yeah I'm just getting around to it now, and relax just a little. Then it dawns on me, oh, I write because the tiny voice inside me has a lot to say and hates being tiny, it thinks all the time, it creates even when I'm sleeping. I can't keep that voice quiet no matter how much Cote de Rhone I down. In fact, give me half a glass of wine and I can write a 400 page book. Get me relaxed and my ideas flow like a pent up river released from a fallen tree obstructing its flow. I'm not a big drinker by any means but sometimes it takes the edge off the painful quest to find just the right word and eases the torment of my mind as it struggles to come up with an accurate expression of a mood or scene. No wonder most authors are drinkers.
In another vein though, it is the tension, the suspension, the excitement of an idea that keeps me writing without stopping even when I hear the onions sizzling in a frying pan and know that they have been sizzling too long. I'm not done with the sentence, the paragraph, the scene. I can't stop now. I have been seen saying words over and over so as not to forget them until I find a pen that works and write them on something tangible. In moments like this I want my mind crisp and sharp, alert and crackling. Don't try to relax me, you'll just tick me off. You should see my house. I have pens and pads everywhere. There is no remembering the perfect thought later on. You won't even remember that you had the perfect thought later on. No surprise there.
Sometimes, without warning, in a split second, eveything can make sense and I think, I'm made from the creative gene of God. What else was I made for except to be creative, right? The Bible says, first there was 'the word'. God's word was 'light. My word is 'write'.
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