I’m not sure I know how to write on purpose.
Writing has always been involuntary. Something which happens as a response, something I can’t stop or think about living forward again until I do. Like an emotional sneeze.
I wish I could pinpoint what substances will instigate it, understand my “literary pollens,” if you will, but… I’ve never had a lot of luck with that. Inevitably, when I post one of my pieces to my own little publication bubble of Facebook, I get comments from people talking about my writing… how it moves them, how much it means, how fabulous it is, and these responses nourish my soul back into balance because, whatever the hell it was I wrote has invariably consumed me from doing a thousand other responsible things I needed to do that day. Whatever my day was “supposed” to be, it was simply scrapped entirely because something had demanded to be born. Birth is one of those things in life that refuses to be put off.
And, conversely, birth is also one of those things which is rather stubborn about being demanded upon to happen. Ask any woman in her third trimester.
Asking a heavily pregnant woman why she hasn’t given birth yet is, most would warn, a rather dangerous thing to do. And, if the inevitable look on her face was something able to be wrapped around by words, I would stamp it across my own face whenever I’m smacked with the question, after sending a literary spasm out to my tiny personal audience:
“Why aren’t you a writer?”
I obviously am a writer, or you wouldn’t have read that thing I just WROTE which inspired you to ask me this idiotic question.
But, unlike I was inclined to do at the end of both my own pregnancies, I try to have a bit of tact when actually answering.
My answers vary, citing time or space or the fold of the universe, the fact that I have kids, that I’m tired, that my stab at getting any kind of literary degree in college was undercut by the fact that I wasn’t that interested in college at all… or how about the fact that I just turned 40 (insert sigh here) and I haven’t yet had the guts to try and get published anywhere, ever. Much safer to aim my emotional sneezes into the hankie that is my little private group of people who I either have met personally or have at least vetted enough to suspect are not total assholes who will say mean things if something I write sucks. Worst case scenario, they scroll onwards, and I am able to breathe again because whatever has just burst out of me like an alien has been seen, and the monster is therefore mollified. The birth pangs will subside, and I will get on with the whole “living” thing.
And yet… as I suspected would happen for my entire life… it seems I have reached a point where that is simply not enough.
I turned 40 a week ago, so naturally I find myself rabidly seeking ways to make all mundane things profound. I suspect this may have something to do with it, but not quite in the way you might think.
When I was really young, and would churn out a poem (poetry is well suited for the young soul, as I age I find myself sounding more and more like the Great Sadist, Dr. Seuss, when I attempt it), and people would present me with The Question (“why aren’t you a writer?”) I would simply say:
“Because I don’t want to be devastated all the time.”
I’ll explain, in case any non-writers happen to read this.
Allow me to conceptualize this using an example of something I am NOT good at: gardening. You know those big, fat, roses you just can’t stand to look at without shoving your whole face into? You know why they are so irresistibly juicy? Because someone who knows how not to kill plants (I am not this person) found the smelliest, darkest, most fecundidly rotten shit to plant them in. We all understand this, but it’s a fact we conveniently forget when we have a face-full of flowers.
This is a lot like writing.
Great writing grows in the dark, and is often triggered by an irritant.
To put it another way, if all is well in the world, then what the hell is there to say? When life is perfect, “fluff” tends to be the only thing which comes out of my fingertips. Very few interesting people actually want to read fluff.
In my opinion, people seek to read for three reasons:
1) They want to be entertained. Fluff is soporific.
2) They want to learn. Fluff is generated by stagnation. If someone is seeking signs of an artisan or expert, what they are looking for is shavings. The difference in texture is distinct.
3) They desire a way to translate the pulsations of life into words. They feel the tides, and harmonies, and dissonances, and lulls, and crescendos, and deafening silences alive within every moment of drawing breath in this world. Everyone feels them, but they don’t know how to wrap them. Words do that. Writers, we do that. A writer who does their job well is less like an artist, and more like a conjurer.
We invoke the spirit of things the reader has, or may, encounter in life. And thus, we either give them the tools to lay these experiences to rest, at peace, or the strategy and weaponry to encounter these experiences well when they do.
The soul’s digestion requires words. Without them, the spirit can not gain full nourishment and satiation from life’s experiences.
When I was younger, I suppose I thought the experiences which merited word-ing were the ones that hurt a lot. Pain seemed to be the most fertile soil for my muse. But, as I am ripening, I am coming to find there are very few moments in life which do not hold juice worthy of squeezing. There are very few moments which, if pressed through good words, do not yield wisdom, or humor, or irony, or caution, or questions. Basically, as my experience in this world increases, I see the simplest of truths blooming:
All things are worthy of words.
Yes, technically, this is the same spectacular insight that dawns upon all one-year olds as well but… often, those are the best kinds of truths to remember.
So, yes, I suppose this is my declaration to the world and universe that I am going to write on purpose, and share those fruits with people who I do not know to be safe.
It is also my mischievous challenge to the unsafe ones who may dare and try to use their words to battle mine.
And finally, it is my declaration to myself that I will no longer allow the richest parts of my soul to be reactionary, or subject to anything’s timing beyond my own. I will put out my thoughts, words, and therefore my very heart, simply because I want to.
And that is more than enough purpose for me.