Thoughts About Writing

Note: This is not intended for instructional purposes. It contains personal opinions and some insights based on relevant experience.

In my estimation, I have never been a hero. There have been some moments that others might have perceived as heroic. I may I have been brave - or stupid - enough to step forward when I should have stepped back. I've taken responsibility for this or that and taken the entire blame for mistakes that were not my fault. In every case, I was there. I assure you I'm not a hero.

Sometimes the alternatives are few and the choice is clear enough. There is seldom much ambiguity in life-or-death situations. Yet, if I had a preference, I would rather sit back and watch, then write about it later on. As a writer I probably need to maintain an even hand with the controversies of life and remain detached if at all possible. It's hard to do that as an active participant. So I create a surrogate and make him or her the hero.

The perfect fictional version of me would be a poor mockery of some comic book character. I would talk with a lisp, be a bumbling, clumsy sort of cape-less crusader called Thuperman! Why cape-less? The cleaners lost it again, third time this month! I really can't take myself too seriously, especially if I'm taking a leading role in a book.

Despite some similarities, there is a vast difference in approach between writing fiction and non-fiction. When there is a chance that the facts need to be embellished to make the tedium of the truth more bearable to read, the demarcation can become blurred. A non-fiction write would be as accurate to the facts and history as possible. A fiction write has much more latitude. Variation is freedom, allowing fiction to be only as accurate as I want or dare it to be.

Non-fiction should not be completely confined to the dull recitations of reality. In case you haven't noticed, there is a lot of boredom in reality. If you haven't noticed then maybe it is because you nodded-off in the process of observation. When you wake up, reality will still be there, with all the boredom you can handle.

Boredom is probably one of the major components of the world. It could be one of those mysterious forces that research physicists have sought to explain how everything is bound together. The reason you are reading this, for example, is you were looking for something else to do and happened on this instead of something potentially more exciting. Boredom is the reason that, whether as a last resort or in response to some anxiety about seeing how some plot line plays out, you leaf through to the end of the book before you should. Otherwise, you set the book aside for another, future reading session and watch TV or do something just as mind-numbingly mundane.

You might listen to music or go to movies. You could go out for dinner to break the monotony of eating in. If you decide not to go out, you may opt for a hastily contrived meal consisting of chips, a cold cut sandwich and a soda. You do that because it's quick and you really hate cooking.

I'm a bachelor again. So, I'm back in the game.

Boredom is why would you invite someone to see a play when you have not been to a play for years. Was it intended to impress upon him or her that you have a little more depth to you? Surely you wouldn't want anyone to think it was just a ploy to sneak a hand up her skirt or down his pants? Afterwards, the question remains: was it because you were lonely and bored?

Boredom is why you read the cereal box every morning even though you read the same words for the past few days and, oddly enough, they have not spontaneously revised. It is why you cheated on your spouse not once or twice but a few times - whatever real number 'a few' is. It may be why you go to church every Sunday and Wednesday or don't even go to church at all. It is why, when you were in college, you played footsy under the table with your roommate's girlfriend. It is certainly why the Internet, chat rooms and social sites are popular. It is why kids and adults play video games. It is why sex sells even though almost no one ever admits to buying 'dirty magazines' for that reason alone. Heaven forbid that anyone would think that you are as perverted as they are.

In almost every lifetime there is a climax or triumph over some barrier or difficulty. Such events are the exception to boredom. Yet boredom exists in such abundance that excitement is considered a rare enough commodity to be treasured. We attempt to plan for it, arranging as best we can for excitement to happen. Intending to offset boredom, the scales are tipped way to the favor of dull, meaningless existence. It would take a whole lot of excitement to overcome the ordinary droll life.

As a writer, I tell of the misery of overcoming the station and conditions of life. Other times I record heroic accomplishment to inspire others. I think in the universal balance they pretty much offset one another.

If boredom binds the world together, irony is the essence of the universe. I am not alone in seeing what makes the world amusing. It is just that sometimes I might be the first to point out something to others. I'm told it is a gift. It may be a curse, especially if with my bad timing. I have pointed out the irony to someone who liked being bored and had no sense of humor at all. In my unofficial analysis, seven out of my last ten bosses preferred boredom to irony.

Most of what I write ends up in a journal or a trashcan. Since I compose on a computer, it is a virtual trashcan. I write everyday because I need to. I believe a writer who does not write everyday is probably not really a professional. He or she isn't according to a definition that I read some time ago and a concept many writers I know also share. That is not to say that those who do not write everyday are not writers. It is simply that to be truly professional, writing must be a regular if not almost continuous process. There must be a time each and every day that is set-aside for the sole and uninterrupted purpose of writing. I personally feel that it almost has to be the same time everyday, but that may be just me.

A good portion of what I write in a journal could be viewed as an autobiographical sketch. A lot of the truth is stretched, warped, contorted, and twisted, though. The more two dimensional parts could have been bent, folded, spindled and mutilated - as was the warning of how not to treat the punch cards that computers used when I was a lot younger. If I ever go back and read the journal, I see immediately that it needs to be coerced and cajoled into something universally readable. Almost everything needs additional depth, rendering it into something more three dimensions.

As the writer, I can usually figure out what I was trying to say even if it is vague and I have forgotten when I wrote a particular piece. With a journal, there is the subtle hint of a date and a time. So, reading from my journal is akin to frittered and frolicked with fixed memories. Usually I enjoy the experience even if I don't remember every detail of the process that was going on in my mind as I composed it. To ever produce something from such raw written material creates a second-hand, but hopefully first-rate expos© on what exactly it was like to be trapped inside of my thoughts for a moment of time. It is exactly like being the casual observer of an unholy and unnatural disaster involving a runaway freight train. There are also many strange men wearing three-piece suits, felt fedoras and unlaced combat boots brandishing chainsaws. But what really worries me are the clowns with their floppy shoes and big bulbous noses filled with nitroglycerin as they ride their pogo sticks into oblivion.

A professional writer writes daily until the writing spirit has moved on. I fully believe in the writing spirit and I have seen examples of the spirit departing some writers who were brilliant for a time but eventually acquiesced to producing utter crap simply to feed public hunger. I give the benefit of doubt that perhaps those writers knew that a piece was unfinished, sold before its time, out of necessity and an effort to silence a literary agent or publisher who had called every single friggin' day for two months, just to see what progress was made.

The writing spirit might never return. That is a sad realization for a writer, much like waking up in the morning and discovering all thought processes have reverted to 'normal' operation. For a writer, there was a previous balance before his or her environment compelled the inner voice to take control from time to time and erupt forth onto a blank page. Life without the writer's perception for the odd or ironic is hardly life at all. It is life as a normal person and yes, we all know very well how boring that can be, don't we? I would never wish that on any person. I might wish it on a cat or a dog, though. I think they deal with boredom better than humans.

The writer should determine the length of any piece of writing. It could require a careful and constructive debate with a good editor, but that could be optional. It is difficult to confine writing into a predetermined length. When I was in school I always felt that it was silly to have a writing assignment determined by the number of pages or the number of words. As much as I try to be succinct, 'short' and 'detailed' are antonyms to me. I write until I am exhausted from the effort, collapsed on my desk and snoring. That is usually after running out of things to say about the subject. That is how to determine that a chapter, story or book has ended, for example. The point is that you cannot constrict or restrict the creative process. To do so diminishes the quality as well as the validity of the creation.