To be a writer is to relish in words and see narratives everywhere: characters and crescendos, the mood of the weather, parallel story lines that weave together like carefully braided challah. Whenever I gave myself permission to call myself a writer, sometime around the self-righteous MFA years, I started to have greater patience with the world. No matter the situation, everything could be a story. A traffic jam? A metaphor. Tripping while walking down the stairs? I must write about this. The crazy person yelling at the grocery store? Pure gold.
Sure, some could psychoanalyze that I am attempting to compartmentalize and organize my life in an unnatural way. But, isn’t that literature? To make sense of this complex world that humans will never truly understand, as much as we try through religion, science, philosophy, food, and art? It’s all the same. So let me have it.
I am currently paid to write. In no way is it what you think. I am paid to craft words into advertisements, emails, subject lines, and anything else that can sell a product. While I do not glean creativity from it (and I was recently floored by the poet C.D. Wright’s phrase “predatory arts” — oof) it has certainly helped me hone my craft. Marketing is brevity at its finest (or worst). How can I tell a story in 125 characters? How can I provide value in three sentences? I focus on what resonates with people: alliteration, varied length in words, the clicks and th’s, and rolling r’s. And the one to two word sentences that pack a punch.
Like this.
I once had a dream where a reporter with an old cassette tape recorder with a microphone on a cord asked me: “What do you love about writing?” In the dream I must have been a writer, or someone worth interviewing. I remember pausing contemplatively and speaking into the microphone: “I love the way words come together, and I love the way they fall apart.” I woke up and wrote that down. I remember thinking that I was a bit of a douche in my dream, but I still love that line. How do I make words fall apart? The wild rambling and nonsensical form of brilliant writers. I haven’t gotten there yet. Unless I’m on a whiskey-fueled literary diatribe. But that has never produced anything worthwhile.
To write well takes practice. 10,000 hours, or whatever they say. I find it difficult to set a timer and tell myself that I am going to wake up, or fall asleep, writing. In between sleeping hours there is a job that actually makes money (unlike writing), and a new baby in my life, on top of a husband and dog — not to mention my own health and sanity (new phone. who dis?) But there is something about writing for an audience. Call me ego-centric or performative, or both! but I love knowing my writing will be read. I do not write in a vacuum. I do not have a room of my own. I will not retreat to the woods to be with my thoughts and pat myself on the back for an essay about trees. (Although, maybe I am just jealous that I have yet to write a substantial essay on trees.) I love to hit ‘publish,’ even on a blog that only a few may read. Well, to you readers out there, you give me the life and energy I need to write, however insignificant, even just a couple words at a time.
Like these.