Sometimes I feel like a hungry hostage cowering in a familiar warm and dusky corner of life, anxious to gorge myself with words, maybe an occasional escape attempt from my not-always benevolent captor–my own impatience.
Writing is a freedom. Not writing is not. Other writers will intuitively understand this seemingly trivial declaration.
Yet time to think and to write is necessarily solitary, but elusive.
I yearn for a little aloneness. Inactive activity. I’d get fat writing, but I’m on a diet, you see. Too little time made to write. I’m not fat, unfortunately, just busy not writing.
Then why write at all? I’ve jumped out of planes in order to fly and into oceans in order to breathe. I’ve traveled great distances in a very slow boat with an almost unbearable thirst for speed. Paradoxically, writing, or perversely, the absence of not writing, has clearly become a quest. I love to read and learn about the writing process, which quixotically robs me of precious time to write!
So why this fascination to record fact and fiction for all to see? For some inexplicable reason, I find joy in telling a story to one reader in particular–myself. Sometimes others read that same story. But paramount in my mind, when one day my own memory has all but evaporated in a geriatric fog, I hope to find joy in the re-reading that story I told so many years ago, not so long from now.
For me, writing is something of an inexplicable act of quiet desperation, a way of mollifying an insistent inner voice that cries to be heard, while villifying it for being so insistent. Stupid, I know, but why does one do anything–more than once? Because it’s enjoyable? More than that? Compelling? Maybe, but why? An experiment? Perhaps, but obviously more than that, especially when later comes. What does it matter, ultimately? Let’s just call it therapeutic fun, or a creative outlet. Like woodworking, or bird watching, or metaphysical research.
I’ve struggled to identify myself in the context of writing for years. It hasn’t gotten me very far, so like they say, “if what you’re doing isn’t working, then do something else!”. So it’s time for something else, an attempt to take it to the next level, wherever that may lead; however, if I truly possess a deficit of sustained attention, this is just one more opportunity to spin the bottle in yet another direction. Why write? Who cares? Something to do. Perhaps it feeds a hungry ego’s lust for immortality. I’ve now used that word (immortality) at least twice recently, so perhaps there is something to this, at least in my own feeble thought process.
Fortunately, I’m blessed with some meager but sustainable means, so writing for me is not a matter of survival or sustenance, at least not yet.
So this blog is an experiment. Like it? Hope you do, but doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that I’ll keep writing until I like what I write, and feel it is of some significance. That day may come or not, but for now, I don’t dare dream of this lofty caliber of immortality. After all, it’s just too easy to be intimidated by all the really great writers out here. So in one small way, I’m using this medium to wound two birds. First, it’s a place to creatively collect my errant ideas. And second, it could be a way to invite criticism, and yes, even accolades (if they’re earned and deserved).
For now, humble scratchings for my own edification will have to do. And that is good enough… for now. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll observe the gradual growth from would-be writer to starving author!
I read manuals. Nowhere is there a manual for this sort of thing.
With pen in hand,
Gene
