The Writing Wringer
Found a rant in my drafts. Thought it would be appropriate since my blog’s been a little quiet lately.
I call myself a writer. But in privacy. I call myself a writer but I am afraid to say it out loud. I want to give an elaborate explanation to the world that the act of arranging words into sentences – often ambiguous, seldom meaningful – is a craft. I am a writer and saying that should be simple. It’s not something I get paid for. It’s not something I’m forced to do. It’s not a full time job. It’s not a part of some religion. It’s nothing but who I am. I write, therefore I am, right?
I find that all of my writing is ingrained in a deep sense of grief, inexplicable and a continuous sorrowful feeling, tragedy and insurmountable sadness. I don’t know how to be any other way. Having had my share of depression, having had my troubles with leaving my room for days, having had all of those things you don’t talk about once they’re in the past. I still feel like sorrow lingers long after the reasons for it are reconciled with. It lurks in the corners of the smile you fake when you get asked if you’re doing okay on a completely disorienting day. It scrambles and settles inside the pockets of a jacket you wore too much but couldn’t get rid of. It reappears in the late hours of a party when you’re too tired to keep up with people and all you wish for is to leave, to have simply not been there to begin with. But that’s something for everyone every once in a while and that doesn’t make me a writer.
The stories I love most and even the books I cherish to an obsessive level are all rooted in layers of tragedy and loss. I feel like grief is so goddamn beautiful and to find words fit to describe it is an art that few possess. But for some reason, every person between 20-35 years of age in the 21st century who has access to a keyboard and knows how to type is a writer. Being a writer is the simplest thing in the world from what I’m seeing. Nothing says it better than the words “Writer” in your Instagram bio. Followed by a link to your Tumblr. Tell me it gets any easier than that and I will cry.
So I shy away from the part where I ought to be describing myself as a writer because maybe I’m not. Maybe I have urges to pen down stuff and maybe it’s my safe place and maybe as Didion once wrote that I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking about and what I fear. I battle these thoughts and I feel that self-esteem as a writer is more difficult to attain than I hoped. I envy the people who confidently dish out the part where they freelance and are able to pay monthly rent for luxurious apartments and buy extra-large coffees with bagels and other side dishes every morning. I never question my writing. But I often question the label and what it entails. I don’t know how to separate one from the other. Is there a point where you suddenly go from not being a writer to being one? For the life of me, ever since I started reading I’ve wanted to write. Ever since I realized I could write sentences I wanted longer sentences and perfect sentences and I wanted many of them, lined up one after the other. Because when I sit down to write and when I talk about my blog with someone, it’s just so much easier saying I am my writing and honestly I couldn’t elaborate even if I wanted about there being any distinction between the two.
About Writing: What Matters Not
“Perhaps the only difference between me and other people is that I’ve always demanded more from the sunset. More spectacular colors when the sun hit the horizon. That’s perhaps my only sin.”
-Joe, Nymphomaniac Vol.1
My story is a complicated one. If you try to trace it back to its roots, you would find that too many Small Occurrences were responsible for the person I became. The Big Things never mattered. They never stirred anything in me and I always found it odd. All my writing is influenced by the Smaller Things which I then expand upon. It’s not all that surprising that my favourite book title reads The God of Small Things.
My writing often feels restricted to the places I’ve seen, the people I’ve experienced and every fictional character that I absorbed. That’s not much, but I improvise. Steal some details from one thought, attribute them to a mixed bag of other feelings, mash them up to make it seem real and unpretentious. It’s what I do in order to write. In order to survive. When it’s appreciated I feel strange but there’s no denying I like it and I will do it again.
Sometimes though I find something that moves me and I must take a step back and decipher what it must mean to be able to write something so original. I can’t quite do that yet and I don’t know if I’ll ever get there. I keep saying that I honestly think the best kind of literature has already been written and there is nothing more we can add to it but then a wonderful book comes along and keeps me strung for so long that I must retract my statement, for a while at least.
We need inspiration and we search for it constantly. Even subconsciously. If you’re trying to write, the first thing you’ll want to do is search for a topic that beckons familiarity. Familiarity in itself is safety. I respect people who can write poetry. Those who can play around with fiction, as well. They are tapping a part of their brain that is brimming with creativity. Not all of us are so gifted and aware.
What I don’t vouch for is people who play by the rules. While writing is said to be an art, why are we so strict and hell bent on following particular unsaid rules? No, I’m not even talking about grammar and syntax. I’m talking about how long a sentence should be. I’m talking about why there’s a twitching of eyebrows when a sentence begins with ‘and’. I mean the part where someone coins their own word which is so unique and undeniably apt for the context in which it is written, yet someone will raise their hand and say, “But that’s not even a dictionary defined word.”
I understand why conforming is important but if you need a shining example of why it’s not, I would suggest you to read books that invent their own language. I would request you to find people who don’t think writing should be studied, who write from their heart and who know how to string the invisible chords present therein. I plead you to not be quick to judge harshly, because although Small Things matter, Small Things can also be overlooked once in a while. I hope that maybe one day you’ll notice that the best books, the best writings, even the best poetry have all broken the rules and created their own universe of writing which we so comfortably inhabit that we never notice the deviations at all.
Originally appeared on Medium.com
Sloppy Etymology 