Category Archives: on writing

A Citizen of Writing

Posted on by
Reply

Writing is a place I’ve been visiting for quite awhile now. I’ve discovered that if you visit often enough you look up one day, and you’re a citizen of writing. I’d have it no other way.

Being a writer simply means one thing: write. What you do with it is up to you. Whether you send it out for publication, keep your work in a drawer, or throw it away,  you’re still a writer. It is easy to get trapped in the propaganda quicksand of marketing and making money and the quest for fame. And if you do become famous and make lots of money, what, in the long run, would that mean?  In the long run, not a damn thing. Because in the long run you’ll be gone, but your writing won’t.  And that there’s some good news.

I have a wide-ranging relationship with writing. Sometimes  my words become journal entries, poems, short stories, books, memoir, essays. And of course there are the blog pieces, many of them op-ed in nature as they take some to task, put folks on the spot. Oh well…

Now I’ve been on my own for a long time now, since I was 16 to be exact. That’s forty years and counting. I think people who find themselves without family find places of refuge, some healthy some not. God knows I sought refuge in some unhealthy places. But there were some healthy places of refuge too: writing, reading, music and the sanctuary of nature.

It’s nice being a citizen of writing, of reading, of music, nature,  life.

My thought for you, my dear reader? Remember to live. You are a citizen of life, and maybe writing too.

_______________________________

Write the Words

Posted on by
2

You write the words in front of you, just as they are. If truth be your guide and courage your light, it is your only choice. You write the words in front of you and hope they reach the page before the influence of media, hunger, agendas, wounds of history, stain them. Sometimes you will not know if this has happened for some time. Sometimes you will never know.

You write the words in front of you, the ones that stand before your heart and soul, the ones you know wear your realities. Set them down, straight, true, clear. There are times their at-first meaning will lift like a mist and their core meaning will appear. I am back to fearless (I think). Reality, the experience of it, the exposing of it in all its ineffable shapes, tones, rhythms, sounds, movements, mores, tricks, blemishes, heartbeats, lives and deaths, relationships, lands and cultures, are the aim of your pen.

You write the words. Write, retreat, write again. You cannot – though like me, you likely will, at least at times – worry over what others will think. Have your worry, but give it no say. Write the words, write them anyway.

Live.

__________________

Writing Sanctuary

Posted on by
Reply
Last night, an unexpected and brutally painful event wounded my heart and soul. It reminded me how blessed I am to have the sanctuary of writing. As for specifics of the event itself, let me just say that you can love some in life with all your might and their demons will still lead them to cut your throat.

Writing is not easy, at least not for me. I find few things more intimidating than an empty page that expects me (of all people!) to fill it with something. Yet, once the story begins, the characters are there. You get to know them and they get to know you. In a very real way you become deeply close to each other. I even grow close to the characters I don’t like. Usually I don’t like them because they are laced with cruelty and greed and their siblings, none of whom have never impressed me. But I like my characters – all of them – because I grow to know the all of them.

When life wounds my heart and soul, it is comforting to know I have the sanctuary of writing to return to, my characters to hang out with. I hope you, my dear reader, have sanctuaries in your life too. We all deserve them.
___________________________________________________________________

On Writing: Some Words from Dickens

Posted on by
1

In a March 1836 letter to Catherine Hogarth, the woman who would later become his wife, Charles Dickens wrote, “I like the matter of what I’ve done to-day, very much, but the quantity is not sufficient to justify my coming out to-night.” Dickens was referring to his work on Pickwick Papers.

Among other books, I am reading The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens, edited by Frederick W. Dupee, published in 1960. Like the glorious collection of John Steinbeck letters, Steinbeck: A Life in Letters, edited by Elaine Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten, this collection of Dickens’ letters brings me deliciously close to the writer himself. And oh my, what I would give to be in a conversation with Dickens and Steinbeck, Tolstoy and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and believe me, many more.

But this sentence by Dickens, “I like the matter of what I’ve done to-day, very much, but the quantity is not sufficient to justify my coming out to-night” deeply resonated with me. As a writer I know I am not alone when I say that some who knows us react with a kind of deer-in-the-headlights look when I explain that I didn’t answer the phone because I was writing, or I need to get home or can’t come out because I am writing.

My closest friend in the world, Michael Sulsona, is, without question, one of the best playwrights and screenwriters in the country. And when I say one of the best, I really mean, one of the very best. He’s received many awards yet no producers (yet) have cleared their dust-filled heads long enough to realize they have a great American writer on their hands.

Michael wrote a play many years ago called, The Greatest Play Ever Written. It was performed on off-off Broadway. It is a comedy and is so damned funny when you would leave the theater you know you can forgo sit-ups for several months because you’re now the proud owner of six-pack abs.

 
Anyway, the play involves a struggling playwright who finds himself confronted by a brother-in-law who is entirely incapable of understanding that writing is hard work. In a moment of exasperation the playwright says, “I’ve got the weight of the world on my shoulders and my knees are buckling.” I know the feeling.

What is this essay all about? Not sure. Other than to say to anyone who is a writer or wants to be a writer, write. And if people don’t get it or don’t understand, the hell with them. Write anyway.

I’d like to talk to you some more but I’ve got to get back to my – wait for it – writing.