One Word At A Time

Recently, while in the process of reading through an online application, I read a passage that seemed to account for the temperament of writers. According to this particular “in the know” source, we writers are bound to lead a solitary journey in which isolation and one’s still small voice guides the formation of the templates of what we produce.

In other words, they listed your basic traits for delusional thinking, mental illness, imaginary friendships and madness under the category of “them who are articulate with Word Perfect”. Very cool.

And yes, that so would be me.

But it’s true. Writing is the loneliest and most solitary journey.

Oh if you could hear the voices in my head, the arguments, the justifications and sometimes the rationalizations for why things are the way they are, why the world is not yet evolved to a point where I am sure I can stand it for another minute, and why I am dang sure that no great literary awards will ever fall on a Republican or Democrats desktop. In other words, to sum up my experience in a sentence:

The world ain’t write.

Get that? Words don’t often match experience. Expectations don’t mirror reality.

I’ve experienced that mismatch time and time again as a writer. The leather guy who talks like a girl. The humanitarian who reeks of ugliness and selfish motives. The gifted ones who leave not beauty in their wake but destruction, broken hearts, and upheaval. The no child left behind talk that left all of them in the dust. Even though I never wanted to, I’ve been keeping score of all these insults to my sense of the world. I have my list. I’ve been checking it twice.

I attest I never wanted to wear the label of writer because of all the baggage associated with this set-the uptown privileged snobs driven to verbose expressions and impossible temperaments.

I liked truck driver far better. The expectations were lower. The approachability of being working class seemed holistic. That is until I was told over and over again that “I didn’t look like a truck driver.”

The same goes true with my other artistic endeavors. When I graduated from high school (Go Bulldogs!) my class labeled me as their most creative son. And they also labeled me the most likely to be drawing portraits on street corners as my tribute to a middle age crisis. Well at the rate things are going, I won’t be letting anyone down.

But the thing about expectations, and putting observations, experience, and feelings into words, is that this foolish practise is bound to result in folks who want their money, their time, and their hearts back the minute they are disappointed. Looking at the surface, I've never looked like a trucker, never talked like a writer, and in both cases these assumptions have torpedoed a few expectations. Yippee skipee for me.

On more than a few occasions I have found myself burdened with all communication responsibilities in relationships, because are you ready for this-“I’m the writer.”

And how not fair is that? Ever heard of writer’s block landing in your brain right smak dab in the middle of a really good argument? Yeah it happens. A writer’s words get just as twisted and taken out of context as those of any other enemy combatant’s utterances. We say things we don’t mean. We verbalize those things we shouldn’t. Sometimes we tell a truth not ready to be embraced. Sometimes we won’t lie about that which would have best been approached sugarcoated.

Yet writers are never ever allowed to take their words back. Our words stand in infamy.

Which brings me back to my original point: That point being that if you try to make sense of the planet, get it to meet your expectations, exceed all your ideals, reconcile every goings on, try to put your life into some sort of order of just how you think it should be, well the path gets even lonelier. Life, like that last sentence, becomes a run-on sentence and a messy disaster. Especially once you make the mistake of writing about it.

Now you are forever accountable and held fast to the rules of punctuation, liable, and character defamation.

But dang it some guys get a pass. We live in a world where otherwise intelligent men find their hero’s on the FOX News Network and the guys on Deadliest Catch sure seem more cut out for the Oval Office than it’s current occupant. It is one thing to write about Harry Potter and Project Runway. It is quite another to go deep and try to actually chart a path for yourself and your fellow man.

Which leads me to ask, have you ever listened to a collection of graduation speeches? All that wisdom so freely given from important and accomplished people on just what life is supposed to look like. What grads can regard and disregard. How to sort out just what credit cards you really shouldn’t have maxed out but which ones, dollar for dollar in extending credit, are really worth all that 29.9% interest in the life experience they’ve returned?

This year we lost one of our greatest writers, Kurt V, who told us in the form of a grad speech turned top forty hit that we should dance like no one is looking, try something each day that scares us, and live life like we mean it.

Which I suppose, if you are a writer, is a step toward resolution.

Write like no one is reading.

Approach one topic each day that scares you.

Write like you mean it.

And don't even think of dating.