Another
Why I Do Not Write
I started my education late. This means (if it means anything at all) that my reading and writing days began late in my life. I tried hard to play “catch up” with other students who, as my college professor told me when I decided to be an English major, “had been reading and writing all of their lives.” And to a large extent it was true. I had classmates who read Milton’s Paradise Lost by the time they were in fifth grade. Another classmate in graduate school wrote a short story every single day as an exercise. Amazing, I thought to myself. These testimonies never ceased to both surprise me and depress me. Even now, eight years after graduating from one of the top English graduate programs in the nation, I still ask myself the same question: What makes me worthy of being called a “literary person?” Am I a writer?
I wrote the five sub-title sentences today, as I was in the process of writing a segment of what I will now begin to describe as a “novel.” The word itself lends itself to so much pretentiousness that I am embarrassed to use it. The story I am writing has been “boiling” over in my head for a few years now. I have written sketches of things and tossed them aside over the years. The confidence to call one’s self a writer was one I never possessed. I don’t think that I possess it today; even after spending countless hours in the last few days hammering what I am arrogantly calling a “novel.” Now, only eight pages from finishing every blank page on this notebook I have to wonder. Has this been time well-spent?
Perhaps people who read this might think this is really a case of low self-esteem. But it isn’t so. It’s more like frustration. If you don’t believe me, try this one on for size. Several years ago, the number one book in the “New York Times” bestseller list was Dennis Rodman’s As Bad as I Wanna Be. The book was, as the title implies, a defiant declaration of attitude. “If I want to be a writer, I’ll be a writer… and don’t you forget it,” it seemed to say. And so in the flash of a wink, Dennis Rodman, known for his basketball records, his on and off-court antics became what so many “wanna-be” writers (if I may use the colloquialism) covet: a bestselling author. Again, it may sound like I am just bitching. But it’s really more than that. Perhaps jealousy, you say? Well, not that exactly. It has more to do with the actual title of “writer.” Who gets to fill their mouth with self-pride when they say, “I am a writer!”
Everyone is a writer nowadays. Visit any major mega bookstore today and you’ll be surprise at the amount of “bargain” books piled up (always at the entrance) waiting for attention. The Little Book of Zen Sayings, How to Live Correctly, the list goes on and on. It amazes me that behind every single one of these books there are people, the writers. There are so many of them that I can’t even begin to compare myself to a real author. They seem to command respect and tribute from us “posers.” Or do they?
I can’t really make a generalization here but it might be safe to say that most bestsellers today are not about emotional losses or unfulfilled dreams. Murder, thrills, mystery, and frills claim most of the spots on the bestsellers list week after week. Most readers in America want to be scared for their money, or challenged to figure out a murder mystery. They want the escapism that (on the average) $24.95 can buy. And make it last too. No bestseller mystery or thriller can claim a spot of success if it is under 200 pages. Success of this type is fast, filled with glitz and potential financial gain. But there is another side to the writing craft; the side that wants to print stories of deep emotional scars, of loss and romantic desperation. I am not sure America wants to read that. There seems to be no money in that. Or else, for every hundred Stephen Kings, Dan Browns or J.K. Rowlings there can only be one Toni Morrison, Paul Auster, or Ellen Gilchrist.
When can I call myself a writer? It’s not about the dollar signs, at least not yet; or the high-level agent contracts. It’s really more about the title “writer.” An acquaintance of mine, a published author of science fiction novels, tells me that I am a writer. “If you write,” I remember her saying, “you are a writer.” While the sentiment is well-intended, it does little to quench my agony. Who is a writer? One who writes? Is it really that simple? Shouldn’t one know a bit more about life to declare one’s self a writer? Sure, I could keep a journal, or research literary theory and write academic papers. Those people are writers—they write! But I am talking about imaginative writers who by the power of their own will and mental strength create worlds of fiction as real as the empirical one we live in. That is precisely what my acquaintance does. Even though I don’t read science fiction, I consider the genre one of the most demanding in fiction writing. The whole purpose of science fiction is to make the fantastical real, the unbelievable as real as water and fire.
I don’t consider myself a writer but rather an escape artist. That’s what I do when I am writing, really. This so-called novel I am writing helps me escape the world I worked so hard to make for myself. The world is not bad, that’s not the point. The nature of human beings is progressive, and, invariably, once our lives slow down, our minds take off to invent a fiction larger than ourselves. We survive through this escapism. Right now I am trying to survive, if not for me, then for the sake of a character in a story I myself have constructed out of mud. Let me not forget that the story is also about a woman whom not only do I “kill” early on, but also “prostitute” her memory to the same man who has “stalked” her for the better part of two years. Again, what makes me believe I can fashion a world out of my imagination and make it so real as to shake the foundations of emotions and life? There might be giants among us, but “gods?” I hardly think so.
Perhaps Jorge Luis Borges was right. His vision of the writing process concealed in it not arrogance, but a general consensus that “what is good belongs to no one.” I have written quite a bit in the last few days, even with a bit more discipline than I ever did before. I hope, regardless of how the “novel” (it does sound pretentious, doesn’t it?) works out, that the habit of writing is now for me a permanent one. I’d hate to think that this notebook is coming to an end; this is the penultimate page. I am afraid of how the next one will go. How fast or how slow will I write? How many issues/stories would I put on it before I decide on a specific one? I think that was primarily the problem with the notebook that is now closing its last few open spaces to my pen. Perhaps I will continue to write. The anger is beginning to subside now. It is not difficult to compartmentalize these feelings and translate them into the fictions I wish my life had been in reality. It is an agreement we make with ourselves. Once the years have passed by and our grandest hopes have also gone with the days, we tell ourselves, “It is okay, I can make this; I can harness this emotion into a story to validate not only my reasoning but my most intimate fears.” We do it everyday. It is inherent in us. We struggle to make a bad situation better, to survive from one day to the next in a job we hate, in a marriage that is not working out, or counting our luck for the lump that turned out to be benign.
And that is what writers do, and I cannot. They are able to recall the original emotion that made the experience lovely, desirable, hateful, terrible or great and end up creating a fiction that takes its place; they fulfill the demands of their amazing hearts with the ease of a scalding knife cutting through butter. This is the moment when “the mirror of fiction” gets turned around and the original equation (that fiction must mirror life) is reversed, and fiction seems—at least for a time—more real than any real-life experience. A literary friend of mine calls this escapism, and I can’t say I disagree with her assessment. We seek something that will make it less painful to look at our own lives; a selective-judgment point of reference that allows us to say “see, that happens to other people too!”
We live in a fiction we craft ourselves to escape the pain of real life. Most times it needs not to be written down. We embrace Jay Gatsby’s mastery of reinvention because we are never at peace with our lot. Our “Americanism” does not allow us to accept the defeat gracefully. We turn our back on reality and embrace a fiction of our own making. And who could blame us? In the age of “reality” television, each of us deserves a bit of personal fiction.
Writing fiction is like putting all your emotional eggs in the proverbial basket. If I were to be cruel about it I would say that writing fiction is a fiction itself. I have no idea what the numbers are today, but who isn’t writing a novel today to try and be the next Dan Brown? Fly around in your own private jet (as in a fiction of sorts), land in your own airport next to your mansion, etc. I live with the reality that writing fiction is just a pain in the ass—plain and simple. That is why I hate it so much. Writing fiction helps me escape to a world where things are fashioned at my will, but what writing “giveth with one hand, it taketh away with the other.” The time I spend writing a story that I might not even finish is really time boiling over the painful reality of lost loves, betrayals, defeats, victories (real or imagined) moves, changes of heart and so on. Should I continue writing? If time is an issue, then I could just read what others write; or better yet, master the Six Suites for Cello Solo by J.S. Bach. On the other hand, should I yield to this feeling of wanting to create these worlds, these characters? How egotistical would that be? Do I really have anything important to say to the world about my deep emotions? There is no answer. And now there is no more space. I just reached the last line of the last page of this notebook. If the answer were to come right now I would have to start a new notebook. And do I really want that? Yes, I believe I do.
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