Write Stuff

[catelin]

I've been thinking about writing over the last few days...really thinking about it. Mostly, I've been wondering about the different reasons people write, and how they write--how much or little of their own voices creep into their printed words, what motivates them. I'm not thinking so much about journaling. I can certainly understand most of the many reasons a person might journal. I'm talking about writing for an audience--poetry, fiction, essays...those sorts of things. I was discussing this with my doctor, who often writes for a living. We talked about our reasons for writing and I realized for the first time that not all of us writers go through the same process to create our stories. I think there are different types of writers and I'm trying to figure out what they might be.

I perceive myself as more of a scribe, even though I write fiction for the most part. I chronicle little pieces of people and things that shine and catch my attention somehow. I find a comfort in acknowledging the tremendous battles/losses/heroics/etc. to be found in the smallest of moments. I tell the stories of the angels that dance on the heads of pins...or at least, that's how I think of what I do. I am compelled to write, not so much as a psychological release of my demons, but as a way of reaching out and patting the universe's hand. It's corny, I know. But some of the best and most beautiful things in my life are.

So what is it, writers? What is it that makes you do what you do? How is it you perceive what your purpose in writing is? What do you like or dislike most about it? I'm so intensely curious about this now.

Comments

[reive.livejournal.com]

For me the process is about acting, or perhaps channeling. It is definitely about being more and other than Reive. When I am deeply into something I am writing I become my various characters, both when at the keyboard and in my life. It is hard to seperate myself from them, it is like posession, and sometimes I will spook, catching my reflection in a chromed elevator door, my garb fitting my current imaginary friends and a facial expression belonging to someone else, and I'll gasp. I see you, I'll say. But as much as they are on me, they are also with me, and if I feel a certain upset or annoyance, I will fee their finger brush across the top of my hand, or a palm on my shoulder. The detail is appalling, the texture of skin, the weight of flesh, their heat, their pulse. To write, I am a madwoman, making friends and forging bonds more intimate than sex with gollums I create from air and absences. They become so completely real they at times even visit others. I love the process, this madness, but it shames me deeply, as it is unnatural, and it seems either unkind or inappropriate to speak of.

[catelin.livejournal.com]

Why do you think it unnatural? I have experienced a bit of that as well...bringing characters into your world. I find the idea of creating intimate gollums fascinating, and I believe it's what the best writers do. It's interesting to me when people find writing to be a painful or uncomfortable process, because I have never found it to be so for myself. I sometimes wonder if my own writing isn't destined to be considered mediocre precisely for that reason--because it is not forged or birthed in that way. Then I remind myself, as I told someone last night, that every tiny bit of my happiness was hard won--I fought brutal battles for some of it. So perhaps my pain just occurred at a different place along the continuum. I'm not sure. How do you feel about your writing once it's finished? Are you happy with it? Or do you find yourself even more critical of it once it's done?

[reive.livejournal.com]

Well, you know, I sit down and chat with imaginary people. I let them live through my flesh. It's certainly not NORMAL. and I'm sure if I still had a shrink he'd have a field day with it.

But mostly I am uncomfortable with it, because it has to be so private, because one can't really go about introducing one's invisible friends to one's non-invisible friends, or casually mention having a nice chat over tea with one of your characters.

That said, I have to go home and have a talk with the voice I've been writing in. He came out of the fanfiction exercise I've been doing (and will continue to do until it's done), and the voice and character he has come to have is strong and terribly tangible, but more and more, as he's been expounding on other things at me, I realize, he's hiding in the guise of that borrowed character, so I'm pulling out a straight backed chair tonight and asking him, "who are you, REALLY?" He's stubborn though, and I don't suspect he'll tell me his real name for some time.

I'm very happy with my writing when I first finish it, but often hate it looking back on it with the distance of years -- but part of that is I am also an essayist and a poet, and it's hard to see myself in the throes of a love or affliction and expressing it beautifully in a way that could matter outside myself, and be thinking with the virtue of hindsight, "god, all that, for such a right bastard." So sometimes it embarasses me, yes. But my characters, I love always.

[anoisblue.livejournal.com]

How weird...this is just now on my friends list as a new post, Cate, but dated 1/26? I probably should think about this more before I write but... I write because I want to live forever, because so many people I loved died when I was young and I would be absolutely thrilled if I even had a grocery list from them. Actually, one of my grandma's kept notes in her Bible and a small diary of road trips with grocery expenses and gas expenses etc... and while my cousins and other relatives were busy grabbing up the expensive furniture and silver, I grabbed that Bible and that little book, it's all I wanted. I started writing letters to people when I was very young - books of them, never sent, just in case I died. I found out I was more me on paper than I could ever be with my voice, in person, with all the fears of rejection etc...

Yes, I think that's it. I dont ever worry about rejection when I write (yes, even when I get a rejection)... And also, it's the craft. Growing at it, completing something you really LIKE, telling a story so it moves someone...all of that.

[catelin.livejournal.com]

I've always kept journals for that reason...to leave a bit of myself behind. They're so completely garbled and unorganized, though; there's no telling what anyone would think of them! The craft part of it is something that sort of sneaks up on me. I'm too lazy to really take an active approach to improving my writing...but I can look back at things I wrote even a couple of years ago and see a difference. That's always a good sign!

[emrecom.livejournal.com]

I write because I am spectacularly inept at most everything else.

More importantly, I write because to not do would result in identity evaporation.

Choice has never been a significant option.

not that i consider myself to be a "writer," but ...

[rockstarbob.livejournal.com]

i write to give gifts.

[catelin.livejournal.com]

Perfect!

re: Write Stuff

[jourdannex.livejournal.com]

I think journaling can be different from writing with a purpose. I think my own writing goes through stages. I used to very often write prose/poetry and it was a way of getting emotions out, but it felt very often as if I could not carry on until I got these thoughts out of my head, as if the ink was blood, it sometimes came through me, but when I went back to look at it, it did not always feel as if I wrote it, if that makes any sense.

Somehow along the way it morphed into little anecdotes, of emotions of all shades. Maybe years down the line it will morph into something altogether different. But for now I seem to be writing different stories, about different people, or things that had happened to me. For every one tiny piece that I do post on here or in an online medium there are hundreds that I write strictly for no one but myself, because I *have* to write, it must come out or it feels like my head would explode.

Like when suddenly you shoot up in bed to write something down before you forget it at 2am. I never know what to do with it all though. So it just stays in bound books and on my computer.

I could never just sit down and force myself to write. It would never make sense. Something more likely comes over me to make do this.

I very much admire people who can create and invent characters, I do not think I could ever do something like that.

What annoys me the most about writing is having a beautiful idea, and perhaps you are driving or do not have a pen nearby and you lose that thought, and it is somehow just gone. I think that saddens me the most.

What I do like about LJ is finding so many talented people who write beautifully. And in so many different styles, but all weaving a common thread of storytelling.

Re: Write Stuff

[catelin.livejournal.com]

I'm awful at inventing characters. I usually draw from people I know, pictures I've seen...something outside of my own head. I embellish from there, but I can never just draw them out the way that some people can.

[beatnikside.livejournal.com]

I couldn't begin to tell you. I think I keep writing to figure out why I'm doing it.

[catelin.livejournal.com]

So would it be safe to say that you're in the "compelled" to write category?

[emrecom.livejournal.com]

It's far more than a matter of being compelled.

When I was a teen, I wrote symphonic music. Then I was in a series of musical groups. I felt constrained by the limitations of pop music and bored by "serious" msuic. I had always written words, but it took many years to find suitable language.

Once I had, I transferred from music to narrative.

If left in a room, my first instinct will be to somehow *make* something. Making things---noise, words, whatever--is my function. This may sound pretentious or something, but I think we all have primary functions. It would be nice if mine were more profitable, but there you have it again--choice. I didn't choose me, I just ended up like this. Heh...although I'lll certainly take credit for all the screwy ways I thought actions would define me.

My ex-wife, a very well-known writer, went sort of crazy some tiem ago. Partially, from writer's block. In interviews, she described this phase as a time spent being nothing, of literally having no idnetity. Her self returned when she was able to make stuff again.

I'm not much different.

[reive.livejournal.com]

My ex- used to yell at me for writing about him -- in poetry or in using him for inspiration even in the slightest for characters -- a manerism here or there, what have you. He said it was an invasion of his privacy, a way of negating our relationship by my putting it into my work.

But to be with him and not to write about him, was the same for me, as a writer, as not being with him. It is through the word that I see. To ask me not to write of him, and he did not ask, he demanded was the same as saying to me, "I would rather you be with me with your eyes and tongue cut out, than as the woman I know, because I am ashamed of myself."

It was intolerable.

Oddly, he has a journal now, where he writes occassionally about how the journaling process is immature, offensive self-indulgence.

[catelin.livejournal.com]

The urge to "make" things...I have that too. I would guess that we all have that, to one extent or another. I do so many other things, this makes me wonder if I dilute one talent by focusing on another. I seem to be destined to be good, not great, at many things. Do you think that focusing on painting or music, for example, would take away from the creative energy you would otherwise devote to writing? Is a choice necessary?

Re:

[emrecom.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what 'great' is. I think that 'focused vision' is attainable by all. But there's an entrance fee.

I don't do music now because I worry that my efforts would be diluted. But I tend to worry.

Re:

[beatnikside.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say that at all, though the Doc would. I'm more compelled to take baths. Writing is a ... therapy? Addiction? I don't have the proper word for it. You're talking to someone who took his typewriter to the beach before the laptop era.

I guess it was a kind of defense against the world for a time. Then I got a camera.

Worth noting -- I keep a ink-and-paper journal as well, and have since 1979. In 1993 I started writing in it every day. My frequency has recently slowed to once or twice a week, but I'm still with it. And the journal is never more than ten feet away from me. Just in case.

[doctorgogol.livejournal.com]

No, I wouldn't put you in the "compelled" category. I think putting words down on paper or on a screen is more like joy for you (even it doesn't feel like joy sometimes).

Interesting comment on writing being a defense. For me, it's more often than not my revenge upon the world.

I still think the most elemental reasons I write are twofold: 1) to feed the souls of others the way my soul has been fed by art and literature, and 2) because it's really the only thing I do well. Alas.

Fiddle Dee Dee!!

[catelin.livejournal.com]

It's not the only thing. Ba-da-bamp! ; )

Re: Fiddle Dee Dee!!

[doctorgogol.livejournal.com]

True. But my audience for that is rather specialized. Heh. ;)

Re: Fiddle Dee Dee!!

[rockstarbob.livejournal.com]

hey now!

Re: Fiddle Dee Dee!!

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

I can't wait to hear about that. ;)

[emrecom.livejournal.com]

Oh. And I journal as a break from the loneliness of writing.

[curtankerous.livejournal.com]

I don't like to write "on purpose". It's just that sometimes I want to or maybe even I "have to" write. When it's from the heart, I am just trying to capture and/or share a feeling or moment. When it's Writing with a capital W, I am all worried about narrative, structure, voice, acceptance, pretentiousness, the fact that it's not from the heart, etc, etc, blah blah blah..

I write but I don't think I'm a Writer. Nor do I want to be.

-- And thanks for asking this question. It seems I've been more compelled to be "a writer" as opposed to being compelled to actually write. And now layers of guilt/obligation/shame have just melted away. You don't know how much of a whew moment this is in my life.

Off to read now. And non-fiction at that!

[kenhighcountry.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I can really say why I write.
It is what I do,
have been doing (though sometimes sporadically) almost my whole life.
Maybe it is because I grew up surrounded by books, in a household where books and poetry and literature and history and current events were the dinner table topics.
Or maybe it's just a chemical inbalance.
I don't think I've ever really analyzed why I write.
I just do.

And I don't always like it.
It's work, hard work.
The ideas are easy. The writing is hard. And the rewriting. And the rewriting again.
The physical act of getting my butt into the chair, and doing it.

So, I'll defer to Joseph Conrad, from Heart Of Darkness:

I don't like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don't like work--no man does --but I like what is in the work,--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself, not for others --what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.

[catelin.livejournal.com]

The ideas are easy. The writing is hard. And the rewriting. And the rewriting again.

That is exactly it!! I find the edit/rewrite to be harder than writing at all.

[ex-verdandi713.livejournal.com]

Assuming this question is open to amateurs as well as the pros...I don't know why I write. I seem to have been born with dual citizenship in Real World and Imaginary World, and I like to give my passport a good workout. :-) Not very eloquent, I know, but...

[dabroots.livejournal.com]

I'm going to talk about experiences with writing I've had at various times in my life, although none in the past eleven years. It happens that those eleven years also comprised most of the years I was married, but that's another matter, to some extent. I recall as long ago as high school, in the early 1970's, when I wrote my first short story. It was such an ecstatic experience for me, as if I had created a little world within the confines of a few pieces of paper. I think it's possible that endorphins are released in one's brain when the process of successfully coming toward the end of a work is almost achiveved, in full. And then the end. The crystallization. Coal being squeezed into a diamond. Feeling like Superman. At least for awhile. I felt it again and again in the context of writing courses at Illinois and in North Carolina. There is much joy to be had by taking seemingly diverse elements and making them cling together for a common purpose. I've been busy making a living at selling and marketing the books written by other people, some very good books, but it's still not the same. Thanks for asking. Maybe I'll get my ass back in motion, or at least my brain and typing fingers.

Why AND when?

[love069.livejournal.com]

I used to hate writing in the school when my teacher gives me a home work to write any thing I used to hate all that, but two years ago I was forced to write to explain my self and my belives to others so as usual i did what i always do when i start to do any thing i read abut it any whear any book also i was a reader addected to reading which gave me some experinces which helped a lot now I think that writing is some way of realving your self and most of your writing is to empty out your mind from some ideas to let others use thim and more is to write some thing nice like peoms and short or long storeis which you include your past expirinces to help others to know new ideas and knowledges.
I think of doning any thing not writing only (I must do my best to know how and improve my self all the time renew my self every second and be with the world improvment).
Also i think writing is simlar and if you write in juornal or on a school wall magazine are the same you must do as profecsinals .

[fakeazulhair.livejournal.com]

Un maestro me dijo que escribiamos para salvarnos del suicidio....
aunque yo lo interprete como un "mientras te vuelves loco y a los dem?s"
bueno eso era cuando estaba en la etapa "nadie me entiende" ::b

En estos d?as pienso que es m?s que un desahogo,
darle cierta realidad a nuestros sue?os, imaginaci?n, sentimientos al momento
de nombrarlos as? le otorgamos un significado a nuestra existencia. La escritura
es lo ?nico que nunca me abandona.
::]]

[Supongo que cada quien tiene diversas razones, unas son m?s simples o complejas
que otras.]

[4hour-ramona.livejournal.com]

this is dumb, but i like the way my handwriting looks.

things i type don't count because they're either trite are all acadamical. and as far as this journal thing goes, it started as a way to pass the time, now it's a compulsion. i like when people react to the things i say, either good or bad.
i wish there was a deeper thing than that going on, and maybe there is, but tonight i'm just feelin' a bit shallow.

[catelin.livejournal.com]

I like the way your handwriting looks too. Hint. Hint. Big freakin' whoppin' hint. ; )

[sun--king.livejournal.com]

I began to write because it told me something about me. Feelings I never knew I had magically appeared, coherently, on paper. They stared back at me.

I write now to play and to give.

I have written songs since I was nine years old. I still feel sometimes I must write or the words in my brain will just explode.

[catelin.livejournal.com]

Do you find songwriting different from writing a poem or a story?

[sun--king.livejournal.com]

Yes definately. I find the song structure (and within certain short timeframes) easy to create at the outset. To me its the rewriting of the words - from whatever drivel it started out as - to accompany the melody that is the time consuming part. I am probably much more practiced in writing songs which helps.

Interestingly, since I've been writing on LJ I've been writing less songs. Must. Do. More.

[harperwilla.livejournal.com]

Depending on what I'm writing, I've got lots of reasons.

Because I always have. Because it makes me feel better. To clear my head. Because I'm one of those people who watches. Because I love everybody's stories. Because there's too much interesting stuff all around all the time to not write some of it down. Because people have actually published the stuff, and that makes me feel good. Because sometimes, a character lands in my head and harrasses me until I give in to her, and put her down on paper.

I keep trying to stop, and it keeps not working.

[catelin.livejournal.com]

Because I'm one of those people who watches.

Me too.

why i write

[chaizzilla.livejournal.com]

poor impulse control & no lack of outlets

!

[verian.livejournal.com]

Writers write

There is only one reason for writing, anybody who tells you otherwise is either lying to you or themselves. Writers write to be read, being read leads to readership, readership leads to sales, sales lead to fame and money. It's a ladder and every new writer stands at the bottom looking up, the light of hope glinting in their eyes. There are no great works written long hand and lying in a dusty attic in the heart of suburbia that have never seen the light of day, someone somewhere other than the writer will have seen it and rejected it. This doesn't mean that it is worthless writing but that the writer did not write for altruistic reasons.

Writers build walls around themselves to hide their aspirations. "Just a little something I knocked up", "It's not great writing but?", "Please find below my submission for your magazine that I hope will be suitable for publication," whilst inside, behind that wall there's a demon with a puffed up chest and stuck out bottom lip shouting, "This is the best thing you will ever have received, at the very least you should devote the entire issue to me." Everybody denies this of course, including me. The wall is necessary to protect writers from rejection, if you go around telling everybody how great you are but don't have a published piece to show for your self appointed greatness then you are wearing the emperors new clothes. If you play it down and turn up with a book in your hand with you in it then you get a pat on the back and a big well done.

Why people begin writing in the first place is a different matter. Some write because they simply have to, it's an addiction. Some begin and expect nothing. Some just want to get words out of their heads. If they keep on writing then eventually they will all find themselves looking up at that ladder. Everybody does, everybody wants what they have written to be read. If you don't, if you can honestly say that you don't want anybody to read anything that you have written then it is not writing but masturbation.

If you want the whole world to marvel at your mind then you are a whore.

I'm a whore, justify me, validate, give me worth, a purpose, reason and then I will leave you bleeding in an alley as I run off with your wallet.

Don't you see? I am a better writer than you, than anybody. We could put it to the readership, get them to vote and even if you won I would still be a better writer than you because I have been misunderstood, the readers weren't ready for such innovative work or other 100 reasons. You should feel the same way if you lost.

Repeated failure cannot dim the hope, we write because we love it. It is impossible for others to understand who are not also embroiled in the creation of a universe. We damn well love it.

That wasn't me speaking, it was my demon.

(See, I told you I'd deny it)