BLOG WRITER EXPLAINS ‘WHY BOTHER?’

“The arts … are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow …

Sing in the shower.

Dance to the radio.

Tell stories.

Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward.

You will have created something.”

Kurt Vonnegut

In other words, fart around.

 

It’s very painful to read about people so disappointed and hurt about their writing career.

They read a lot, went to grad school for an MFA, did well, and still can’t get their work published where it matters.

At least where it matters to them and their writing community.

But there’s something worse.

Each post about how hard they’re trying, how hard they’re working, how hard they’re submitting, each post strips away another layer of their identity.

Their self-esteem takes a beating until they figure out the why’s and wherefores of their feeling like a failure.

In other words, they discover who to blame so they can quit trying so hard, writing so hard; they can now quit submitting and getting rejections.

They were screwed from the start because their parents weren’t wealthy and fronted them a lifestyle for five years so they could get started and focus.

What they didn’t hear: “Honey, we will pay for everything until you’re thirty so you can do your writing. If you need to go to Paris to live in a cold flat like Hemingway, you can.”

Except high school Hemingway had a job, a writing job.

 

The Writing Job

Every job is a writing job if you look for it.

As a medical assistant I wrote heights and weights and blood pressure.

I was shocked to see such healthy looking people carry such bad numbers.

It piqued my imagination as to what motivates people.

Poor health leads to poor decisions?

FDR was in poor health yet led America through the Great Depression and WWII with his decisions.

 

I wrote every day as a museum cataloger, immersed in the details of materials, shape, size, and usage.

Again, my imagination was lit up.

In the museum community, the history museum community, objects are collected based on their uniqueness, if it was used in an important event, or an important person owned it.

It’s a chair U.S. Grant sat in, a saddle once owned by Narcissa Whitman, or a coin flipped to name Portland.

Each has an incomplete story. At least that’s how I saw it, and still do.

 

Each was a writing job, just not a writer’s job.

That job started after work, after wife and kids, after home and yard.

It started early in the morning before work.

Not a coffee shop, not a library, not the middle of the day.

Did treating writing like work make me a better writer?

It did keep my momentum up.

 

Blog Writer Explains Why Bother?

Why not make your life more bearable?

Write that lousy poem.

Do something with objects and write about that.

 

My little hammer must think it queer
To come out of the drawer with no nails near
Nor wood nor steel or warm candle
When the hammer comes out for its new handle

 

But that’s not the point of real writing. Momentum is for losers.

Where’s the death, the divorce, the catastrophe, the world as we know it ending before our very eyes?

It’s all coming for us.

So tell me, would you rather dwell on the downside and feed it Fox News bullshit and war, or find a way to help?

I’m delusional enough to think that struggling people, man or woman, kid or adult, find something to live for in words shared.

Maybe here, maybe not, but definitely not from some bitter MFA-er too high on being ignored and rejected and acting like it all fits into their ongoing spiral down.

Get help, start a blog, and throw a lifeline out there.

Tell your story like it matters to more than you and your therapist.

Do it often enough and you won’t need a therapist and publishing doors start cracking open.

Then answer the question of ‘Why Bother?’

Because it’s not a bother, it’s part of life, your life, my life, and someone looking for a last straw to hang onto.

Give ’em one, blog writer. You won’t know if you made a difference.

It happens, but not if you don’t make the time and effort.

Sound familiar?