Lets Begin
I don't like writing. In fact I hate it. Maybe hate is not a strong enough phrase, I loath, despise, disdain, fully and painfully hate bleeding out the hours of work it takes to get one single line--I love--I don't write; not one bit. Not even the smallest amount. I have a theory that if I sit and watch the pencil long enough it will write for me. So I sit, I wait, I day dream and serf the web, I drift off and wake up a hour later to find everything the same but my pencil, which has lifted itself from the side of my notebook and scrambled to the floor.
My pencil also hates to write. We have the same opinion of it, to do it you have to give too much of yourself. You have to place your head against the grain of the paper and rub it back and forth until you either leave a mark or start a fire. Then, once you have finished it's not worth much of anything and the best you can do for yourself and others is to wipe your butt against it until the words fade away and then start again on another page.
I am a writer.
I have been for as long as I can remember. I wrote my ABC's and words like cat, hat, bat, and aristocrat. I have written poetry and published books, made money and gained fame, if fame can be defined as one person complimenting your work or passing it on to another. I have written for classes, received both failing and passing grades, and every odd strand in between. I have started six novels and intend to finish one of them, one day. Have outlines for three none-fiction works and hope to make a living writing something that someone will want to read. I blame all of this on my mother.
She used to spend her evenings reading to me. I would stay up late--eight or even nine o'clock at night--listening to her voice as the words, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters spilled across my dreams. Like liquid forming to the concave surfaces of my mind the stories she would read shaped the dreams I had and build an idol of language for me to worship with my life.
That's how it all began. Through her guidance and love I grew to express myself with language. Subconsciously identifying with and developing my personally through the value of things I read. I however, never read much, never wrote much, and most of the time I still don't.
I found my "writers voice" last semester, at least the one I will use for the next year or so. I found it while I was struggling to press my head against the page hard enough that some of my past would leak out. I kept straightening the paper on the desk and rushing at it with the tip of my forehead until some hard surface broke the swing. Sadly, this did not work, so I threw fit on the page about how I could not, would not, will not writing anything about my past, present, or future, or any other matters somehow concerning me. I don't like to give myself away like that. Life has been hard, life is hard, and I seem to have so little left in my veins that when I dip the tip of my pen in to the ink well of my heart it drains too much out of me. I would prefer to keep slamming my head in hopes something nice will appear.
Am I a writer?
If I do not read nor write but love to do both am I a writer? If you read and write a lot but hate to do both are you a writer? What defines our identities in literature? Is it a major, a degree of time, a sense of importance or calling? Does it matter who has read your work or is the teenage girl keeping a daily orderly line-by-line accounts of her life an autobiographer? Is the boy writing for love a poet by right, or by action, or by definition? What makes us writers, and poets, and literary critics? When do we become the work we do?
I suppose it comes with time. That title is one we must be given and embrace. I am still struggling to embrace it. I have not written enough, read or remembered enough, nor soled enough books to be a true writer. I hold myself to a higher standard then some do. I claim that one day I will write, or be a writer, or make a living from writing. I claim I am talented but mostly adequate. I claim a lot of things, but will not claim to be a writer before it is my time . . .
A writer I am!
I heard a definition once that a writer is one who notices the world around and sees more then most. This of course could be said about any number of professions depending on what the person is looking at or for. With this defining what I believe, I am ready to call myself an almost writer. While walking and writing this page of jumbled information I saw a dead moth, wings still perfect, body dried and crumbling away, resting gently on the ground beside my foot. The sun caught it by the window pain of a glass doorway. It was obviously struggling to escape. It was a powerful image and with the right words could make it mean a lot to someone; I however do not have the words to use. So I am an almost writer, I saw, but have yet to convey. I hope one day I will be able to do just that.
I like writing what I call true fictional memoirs. They tell the truth about my life. How I was as a child, breaking free from the bondage of my cocoon and soaring across the sky with new wings. My wings were made of life, and love, and knowledge. I write about how I enjoyed discovering the world and how I saw it. The sand castles and invisible men, cuddling with my dog, and waiting up for Santa Clause are all jewels that shine when cast in the right light.
This light is the fictional hue I add to my side of the truth. I both embrace and avoid the truth of painful memories like death, divorce, and depression that swept through my teen years by changing the colors of the truth. As I write I find myself caught behind the glass of my past, slamming in to it when I seek to move forward and unable to move beyond who I am. I mask the body of my life by coloring the wings of my memories. The filth eating away the core of my being, bleached by the light of the sun streaming through the glass walls of my past is sheltered under the vibrant fictional colors of my wings. Bright dust changing the way we see the world and reflecting a warm glow on the paths great men have walked before me.
Writer, am I a . . .
Generally I repeat things I have already said. Mixing the words around and making them sound different until the song sounds dry and the words no longer make sense.
Am a I writer . . .
Mostly I am confused. By everything.-- I have a lot I would love to say to myself. The problem is, I don't think I will listen to anything I say. I have never in the past and what is the past but a reflection of the future. So here we are at the end of the begging, and believe it or not I still hate to write. Its not that I think I am bad at it. In fact, I am confident in my ability. Yet I hate doing it. I don't like writing for a class, under the instruction and form of others, I don't like writing for myself, under my harsh expectations and criticism, and I don't like writing for others because everything I write is so personal that I feel my Christian family might just have a heart attack if they ever read my real story. So, I mix things up, I take the easy way out, I do 36 pages instead of 40, 8000 words instead of 10,000 I day dream and dream of days when I wont have to write. But the truth is, I will always need to write. It's how I talk, express myself. Share and show what I am. It is now I navigate the shores of life. As I write the days drift by and I am simply caught up in the current of my shifting sand.
Lets Begin
