Creative Strains
Most writers will tell you the same, that they live their lives in a kind of creative insanity. Where characters grow and develop like seedlings that creep into your garden, where plots sprout like weeds and conversations breed like rabbits. Most writers will also tell you that their pockets are full of scraps of paper and half empty biro's, that their studies are littered with half filled notebooks and that they crave paper like an alcoholic craves whisky. It doesn't even matter that we live in the 21st century where the computer is almost surgically attached to us at birth, to a writer the most beautiful thing is a sheet of clean white paper. The purest form of creativity is a coffee stained manuscript, dog eared and underlined, with notes on plot and character formation in the margins.
We're a strange breed of stationary hungry psychotics, who destroy pens, pencils and pads of paper. Computer keyboards soon become illegible, but the true writer doesn't care, they touch type even if it's in a highly unusual way with their forefingers and their big toes. Libraries are filed with untapped talent gazing enviously at the published works of others, growing suicidal as they critically read their own work and throw it away in disgust.
Only the brave or lucky get published by anyone but a vanity press. The rest of us struggle under the feeling of failure that nags at our ego's, screaming and shouting when we read something that's been published that reads like a five year old's attempt at literature and tastes as plain as boiled rice or unseasoned porridge. But we're not as ice cold as all that, we applaud the few of us that have made their names, have published and become renowned. They give us fuel to strive for the same, to write the great American novel or the next Great British Classic, they show us that it is possible for the great and the good, for the brave and the few to become household names.
They are the ones that make writing an accessible art form, that make the poor undiscovered authors heroes instead of wasters.
The writer is the only truly free mind, the one that can escape this materialistic scheme and travel the horizons of the mind. That with the stroke of a humble pen can take their readers to new and exotic surroundings, they see the world in a completely different light, as intricate and interesting, as woven tapestries hanging in the halls of life. They paint the world with words and show the foibles and shining qualities of humanity. They wield a power unknown to others, to shape the minds of their fellows and change the world with their lyrics.
So when you read something online, like this blog, for example, think of the poor humble, probably unpublished author on the other side of the screen. Give them respect and pity them, for they are the undiscovered gems of humanity.
We're a strange breed of stationary hungry psychotics, who destroy pens, pencils and pads of paper. Computer keyboards soon become illegible, but the true writer doesn't care, they touch type even if it's in a highly unusual way with their forefingers and their big toes. Libraries are filed with untapped talent gazing enviously at the published works of others, growing suicidal as they critically read their own work and throw it away in disgust.
Only the brave or lucky get published by anyone but a vanity press. The rest of us struggle under the feeling of failure that nags at our ego's, screaming and shouting when we read something that's been published that reads like a five year old's attempt at literature and tastes as plain as boiled rice or unseasoned porridge. But we're not as ice cold as all that, we applaud the few of us that have made their names, have published and become renowned. They give us fuel to strive for the same, to write the great American novel or the next Great British Classic, they show us that it is possible for the great and the good, for the brave and the few to become household names.
They are the ones that make writing an accessible art form, that make the poor undiscovered authors heroes instead of wasters.
The writer is the only truly free mind, the one that can escape this materialistic scheme and travel the horizons of the mind. That with the stroke of a humble pen can take their readers to new and exotic surroundings, they see the world in a completely different light, as intricate and interesting, as woven tapestries hanging in the halls of life. They paint the world with words and show the foibles and shining qualities of humanity. They wield a power unknown to others, to shape the minds of their fellows and change the world with their lyrics.
So when you read something online, like this blog, for example, think of the poor humble, probably unpublished author on the other side of the screen. Give them respect and pity them, for they are the undiscovered gems of humanity.
Comments