WHY WRITE IT DOWN, WE’LL REMEMBER

‘Why write?’ I ask myself while trolling Costco with a legible list, a battle plan against over-shopping.

After sweating it out over a hot keyboard all morning I pick up ‘the list’, the most important writing of the current era.

“Do not write so as to be understood. Write in order to understand.”

The real answer is ‘why not write?’ Except only a punk answers a question with a question and calls it an answer. Do we understand each other?

But really, why write?

Writing is training. It’s self-training, classroom-training, life-training. Who doesn’t like training?

The whole writing process can turn into a lifestyle. In fact, it should.

Just don’t use it as an excuse to be weird and ruin it for rest of us weirdos. However, if you do use writing as an excuse, try and do it with style.

The big sellers on the Costco book stand showed mystery writers who look like wizards, action writers looking ready, and TV people who look like pucker-faced bitch-men.

As a whole, their lifestyles are tied to writing if my radar is tuned correctly. It’s a lifestyle of working with editors, agents, buyers, owners, readers, and ignorers.

Then there’s all the rest that make up living for the moment in 2022, which I why I’ve called you here.

Write For One Person: The Unknown Reader

Without any extra drama about a writing life or lifestyle, put on your writing robe and matching scarf and let’s figure this out:

“Don’t write so that you can be understood, write so that you can’t be misunderstood.”

That’s a quote from William Howard Taft, former President and Supreme Court Chief Justice.

Take his advice when you’re the president and chief justice, otherwise give that unknown reader some slack to work with.

For example, if you write about the covid pandemic don’t soft-sell the importance of getting vaccinated and wearing a mask.

Be clear for better understanding. Get vaccinated if you possible can, and if not be a responsible citizen, not like the woman in the store with no mask who answered when asked if she was stocking up on supplies: “Yes, I tested positive for covid and I’m shopping for my quarantine.”

Ah-Choo!

Respect The Unknown Reader

“Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else. (Notice this means that if you are interested only in writing you will never be a writer, because you will have nothing to write about . . .)”

There’s another look with, “Write something worth reading; Do something worth writing about.”

A quick survey of the Jan. 6 insurrection images shows a lot of people doing something they don’t want written about, don’t want credit for, who don’t want to see their faces on an FBI notice for ‘People Of Interest.’

Don’t be fooled by their appearance either.

Just because they look like dimwitted, low-functioning, hicks for the sticks, there were people involved who understood the crime part. The doing-time part is still a little fuzzy but getting clearer.

If you write something worth reading about the insurrection on Jan. 6, try and leave room for interpretation.

You’re a writer, not Woodward or Bernstein, but still stacking words down the page. Try this prompt:

Look at the images at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2022 and use them to inspire a piece of writing describing it as a normal tour group.

After that, look at the images of congressmen and congresswomen posing with groups they toured through the Capitol on Jan. 5 and describe them as good and decent citizens serving their constituency.

See what I did there? Write it down, writer.