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Hello! I’ll be facilitating a conversation this November 24, 5-8 p.m., on why we write and why we read. Early and late posts are welcome but I probably won't join in myself until November 24.

My first thoughts:

Writing is discovery of the self, a kind of archaeology, going into the unconscious, bringing up feelings and ideas into the light—the nature of insight. In sight. Writing is motion, action, throwing words on the page and being part of how they interact and resonate and attract and repel. Thinking really does come out of language. And writing is about being actively engaged in language. Writing is play. Writing is theater. We get to be everything in the stories we write-- a different sex, a different age, a different culture, a different species. We are a king and a fox and a leaf in the wind. We are the wind. And I believe this reflects a basic truth. I believe we are, in fact, part of everything. Science tells us that. The mystics tell us that. Writing is a kind of experiential mysticism in which we try to mimic the unity of the universe. In which every sound, every syllable, every word, every idea, every image is part of a larger whole.

Reading is a dialogue with someone engaged in this process. Like a good conversation with a friend, we are fully participatory. There is a back and forth. We bring our own ideas. We are part of the theater—we are everything in the story. A king, a fox, a leaf. The wind. We experience the unity.

These are my ideas and experiences. We'd like to know yours.

The journey is the pleasure, never the reception afterwards.
Distillation of experiences, generosity to share, reveling in concept, probing the unknown or unfathomable - all are the structure that entices one to write, to indulge, to wallow.

Writing is self-exploration, certainly, but it's also a way to explore the world, to learn the world, to participate in the world. I feel most alive when I am interacting at this level, using my body (hands, brain, eyes) to connect with other lives, other events. I appreciate completely, Sharman, how you connect this with mysticism, with the complete dissolving of the illusionary walls of disconnect. Reading and writing are the same concept...but wow is writing more work! I am so fortunate to have this work...

And here I am, the killjoy.

I don't know when it was that writing became for me nothing like a metaphysical or spiritual or even consciously self-expressive activity. I suffered more than three decades of rejection before enjoying a measure of success. (It was not deserved. Out of seven
rejected novels, only one was really bad. The rest were pretty good!) Somewhere along the way, writing became an occupation I neither reveled in nor approached mystically. Too much rejection will do that. Writing was simply what I did, what I could not help doing. A compulsion, if you will. Often as much curse as blessing.

As Peter says, the pleasure is in the work. For me, that's simply because our minds need something to do. They wither without work. But is writing any different from many kinds of work? You get up in the morning, you do it, applying your best energies, and hope for the best. You change direction, consider market, reject market when you have to, embrace it whenever you can. All forms of work require a degree of creativity when done well.

I've never felt a character possess me, or step away from me, or motivate itself, although my mind sometimes surprises me with a direction I hadn't consciously anticipated. I've never understood when authors speak of characters who take over their work. That pose resembles schizophrenia to me.

Of all the arts, writing for me is most like music. When I am intensely focused on my words, it's their rhythm that most enthralls me, I think. I'm told by a friend/reader who is a professional musician that my prose has a distinct cadence, something involving triads. I haven't a clue what that means to my process, but ever since he said it, I try to chop up my internal series of threes, just to be ornery, I guess.

So, perhaps being self contradictory here, I believe there is an unconscious element in writing, unconscious in the Jungian sense. It may be neurotic, I don't know, but it's part of the pleasure and part of the compulsion both. Regardless, it's the conscious shaping of that element that makes the work sing. Otherwise, it's cacophony. It's vital that the creator never to lose control of the work, or the sound is like an orchestra playing on its own without a conductor. Banal, unshaped, unruly, dull.

I don't think about why I write anymore. Or even how. I just try to do it. So I may read all this later and decide I'm stuffed full of shite. But I thought I'd offer it anyway.

Ah! I didn't mention why I read! Two reasons: to learn as in learn something about my craft from an accomplished practitioner or to learn something that will inform my work in progress, research, if you will.

I rarely read purely for pleasure anymore. Perhaps because I've become too analytical about what I'm reading. It's a loss. Every once in a while I come across a text that enchants, that I can lose myself in. But less and less often.

I regret that.

Mary is way too hard on herself - if the words don't sing to her - then she's deaf. For they surely sing to us all - what other writer can construct dialogue without quotation marks and yet have no ambiguity whatsoever as to who says what? The veracity of her characters shines through, always.

Oh, Peter, you are so kind! But I wasn't speaking of my own writing in that case. I don't let that sentence rest til I can hear the music.

But this brings up something else. How important the ear is when writing. If the voice sounds wrong, I always advise, then it IS wrong. Go back in the piece to where the voice sounded "right". Then start again.

The point is, it's not necessary to figure out why the voice went wrong. Don't waste time trying to determine the why. Just ditch it and start over.

I swear. It's all in the ear.

Part of the joy of writing for me is mechanical. I have a friend who is a car mechanic (I am not by any means) who says that he receives no joy from the mundane problems--new brakes, a new battery, a new fan belt. He loves to puzzle through to find the cause of that strange clank-clank-clank sound when the car backs up. He likes to solve problems. I think that I am that way when writing. I like to figure out how to put a sentence together--one that makes sense. Hemingway talked about writing one "true sentence" in The Movable Feast:

"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.� So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say."

I would like to be able to do that more often. One true sentence after the other. That's the game, as complicated as chess and perhaps just as frustrating at times.

But there is something more than the mechanical challenge. There is also the challenge to tell a story that captures the heart and imagination of the reader. To be a master storyteller, the way my sixth-grade camp counselor was a master in telling a ghost story around the campfire that scared the willies out of me. The intonation of his voice--the whispers and the explosive finish--had me riveted from the first sentence. Could I do that as a writer?

Finally, sometimes I may sneak in a profound message (or what I take as profound), but most of the time, it is just the unpredictable ride that counts, as I watch what happens to the characters who come alive and reveal themselves on the page. Yahoo!

I like your process, Allen. To the one true sentence bit, I'd add one true image. That's how it goes from me. If I get that image, whether it comes in the beginning of a story or whether I envision it as the end, then I can build a whole world around it.

As far as the challenge of telling a captivating story goes, I usually imagine I'm telling it to myself. I'm a hard audience. If I entertain or inform or move me, I've got a good chance of doing so for strangers. Also, that intimacy with my own vision creates an authenticity I'd have trouble finding elsewhere.

Mary:
Ah,your comments made me smile. Why? Because it rings true. I love the idea of "one true image" and being your "own hard audience." It seems that I am constantly having a dialogue with myself: This is boring. This is exciting. This is predictable. This is a wonderful surprise.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Your welcome, Allen. You've spurred interesting reflections for me, too.

Hey, Allen and Mary and Sharman - I WISH I was as talented and astute as you folks - me? I never feel critical of myself... typed stream of consciousness is more my style... the content is king for me... hence the difference in our success with other readers.
But when that one reviewer gets the humor (Python-esque), digs the techno-babble... then it seems worthwhile.
Ah, the ego of it all...

Content is king. I get that, Peter. So do more readers than you know. . .

Without ego, we'd be what? All id and superego? Oy! The horror, the horror!

Mary wrote: "And here I am, the killjoy.

I don't know when it was that writing became for me nothing like a metaphysical or spiritual or even consciously self-expressive activity. I suffered more than three d..."

Your reply was more like the killdeer, Mary, bright and piercing, an honest flash of wings in the blue sky.

Thanks for getting it, Sharman, and distilling it so sublimely.

Yes, yes, Anne. And one shouldn't torture oneself w the why.

For as long as I can remember I was creating stories. I never had imaginary friends; I lived in imaginary worlds. Later, in my teens, as I suffered depression, writing and reading became a form of escape. I don't remember much of that time (my mind unintentionally blocked a lot of it out) but I kept almost everything I wrote. It's mostly teenage angst rubbish but it's interesting to note how much of it was stream of consciousness stuff. I rarely write like that anymore. In fact, now that I'm feeling mostly better, I rarely write anymore. I still feel the need to do it every few months or so. It's very cathartic, as if I need to ball up all the vicious, hateful things in me and spit them on a page.

I miss it greatly, though. I often pick up a pen and wait for something to come to me and on to the page. I don't know if it's because that I'm feeling better or if it's the medication that I've lost my muse. When it does come, though, there's a distinct gallows humour to everything I write. I guess that's depression in its peak, though; we try to find laughter in the things that hurt us. I do enjoy writing black humour and my friends and colleagues say I'm disturbingly good at it. Ha! I'm not sure what that says about me. I will admit, though, I get a perverse pleasure from making people squirm with laughter and horror.

But I'll never get past that feeling when I'm writing; that moment when you build up and build up, pushing against the wall of words until it all suddenly breaks through and everything rushes out and your pen can hardly keep up with your mind. It's exhilarating.

Thank you for all that, Jeannette. It was moving and even inspirational. I hope you continue to write, with or without the rush. For us. The readers.

Haha! Thanks, Mary! I feel a little outclassed here amongst all you professional writers. I definitely wish I had your discipline to write every day.

They say you are what you do, Jeanette. Keep doing it and you'll become it. Then you won't be able to stop. I swear.

Hey, Jeanette, don't fret the writing "days lost"... we all read, and write everyday - but not necessarily anything creative or for the passion of it... heck, I'm typing away now... what we need is a new word for creative writing - let's make one up... Sharman what do you think?... writing for a book, novella, short story - should this have a new word?

Kinds of reminds me of the need for a definition of art over craft...

How about a brand new word? Newspeak?

Yes! I also think we need some new words! We've mixed up creative writing so much with commercial success and approval from the New York Times and best-sellers and, even, with being some kind of truth-seeker and cultural hero. I kind of agree with the truth-seeker part, but we've aggrandized and distorted that, too. Jeanette's description was so appropriate--the simple, personal exhilaration.

Somehow this new word should connote that. Like riding a sled in fresh white snow. The autumn colors of red and yellow. Something that shows how human and delightful and important and everyday natural this is...

Let's think on this.

I have to admit, I loved this last paragraph that captured the image of fall and winter. Words that create in the mind the images we see or we remember seeing evoke a sense of surreal in the chaos of our lives. I seek ways to capture images with my camera, to later return and write of the emotional connection that was brought to my view.

Seeking the world as a canvas in which we capture in words only another writer would see becomes the gift we ourselves receive when we are indeed, captured by another writer.

Thinking on this now..thank you, even though I am late in responding. I just now saw this group.

Wow, that is so well said, Sharma! Such pearls of wisdom! And so poetically expressed! Humbly, my additional two cents would be: Beautiful yet powerful, writing can make sense of absurdity. More powerful than a weapon, writing can change, alter, and divert tension in conflict. And reading, in this context, is meeting the challenge, is opening to new ideas and options. Thus, an exchange in the form of writing and reading might diffuse tension, resolve conflicts, bring humanity and cordial relationships to the table, and reach mutual understanding, charity, and ultimately, peace for all. Namaste, Kim

Kim wrote: "Wow, that is so well said, Sharma! Such pearls of wisdom! And so poetically expressed! Humbly, my additional two cents would be: Beautiful yet powerful, writing can make sense of absurdity. More po..."

Yes, that is such a dimension, too--opening up to new ideas. I think of writer and reader always as colleagues, with lots of common ground, but that still means that we learn new things when we read and build on our existing ideas. Thanks, Kim, for these thoughts.

Why do we write and read--

Writing takes us to another place; it is peaceful and free!! Writing release stress-- It gather us to be humble!

Reading helps us young or older to use our sense of imagination!!

Books in general are "Healers".. Meaning books heals :)