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

[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.