Over the next couple of days, I am going to post some articles that I have written previously. Some of these are several years old, but I would still like to share them. I wrote this first piece several years ago. I wasn’t serving a community of faith at the time; I was teaching full-time and working nights at American Eagle… they give their employees a great discount. Let me know what you think.
I have often told others that I am a writer, and in all honesty, I do fancy myself one. Perhaps this is because I like thinking of myself in an artistic, Bohemian fashion. Plus, I do write. I write grades in a grade book, comments in the margins of students’ essays, notes to others and myself, and every month I reluctantly write the checks necessary to keep the lights on and the water running for another thirty days. Sure, I write, but I am not writing those things that I truly desire to write. The poems, the short stories, the essays all escape me.
If one calls himself a dancer, others assume that he dances. When that Lord of the Dance guy says he is a dancer, those who hear him do not think that he occasionally does a little jig when listening to the stereo while vacuuming the carpet. Rather, his listeners think to themselves, “Here is a fellow who prances across a stage wearing obscenely tight pants that probably allow the observant people in the front row to determine his religion.”
If one calls himself a lover, we assume that he is in fact a regular Casanova. Needless to say, we are disappointed when we learn that his last date was during the Reagan administration.
So I guess when I say I am a writer, people assume that I write things of greater substance than yesterday’s check to Wal-Mart for the family package of Charmin and a copy of Yahoo! Magazine. (Mom always said never to buy toilet paper alone… and I figure what goes better with toilet paper than a good read?) Truly, I like it when people assume that I am producing pieces of true literary merit, and, in the past, I have. So why is it that I, the writer, do not write?
I could say that I haven’t the time. My days are usually packed. Monday through Friday, you will find in room 205 at Jefferson Davis High. To the dismay of the teachers I tortured, I am in fact molding the future of America. (Much like the people who swear they will be good parents because they will never repeat the actions of their parents then find themselves slowly becoming their very own mother, I find myself slowly becoming the teachers I had. Just yesterday, I found myself telling a student that I would do back flips up and down the hall if only he would do his homework! The ghost of teachers past is haunting me!) And as every teacher knows (but the general public DOESN’T know), the job doesn’t end at 3:45 when the last bus pulls away from the school. There are lessons to be planned, papers to be graded, averages to be recorded…. and the list goes on.
Now the incredible salary of a teacher does afford me certain luxuries. My wife and I actually eat meat several nights a week, and it has been months since the lights were cut off for lack of payment. Teaching also allows me to pursue another little past time that I fondly call “my other job.” Selling clothes at the mall isn’t great, but it beats selling blood and plasma down at the local blood bank. (Plus, the last time I was there, the nurse had a really tough time finding a vein to poke.) So add another fifteen or twenty hours to the fifty or fifty-five and you get a workweek of sixty to seventy hours. To this figure, add the hours spent doing the “necessary” things of life (eating, sleeping, watching X-Files reruns… you know, the really essential things!), and it becomes evident that in order to truly invest time in writing, all I need is a clone.
Of course, the time thing may be just an excuse. I’m not saying it is one, just conceding that it MAY be one. After all, we find time to do the things we really want to do. So what else could it be? Maybe I’m just lazy. Maybe the strain of actually sitting down and putting words together is just too much. Maybe I lack the creativity, inspiration, or intelligence necessary. Or maybe I am just making excuses.
Want to know a secret? I think I prefer to think of myself as a writer capable of great and mighty works who didn’t write than as a guy who tried and didn’t succeed. After all, if I never write, I have a perfect excuse to not producing a masterpiece… “You know, I had this great idea for a book, I just never got around to it.” If I do write, and my best effort is mediocre at best, what excuse do I have? That I am just inept?
If I don’t write, the only apology I have to give is a half-hearted, “Sorry, I just didn’t get around to it.” If, on the other hand, I do write and the piece is particularly awful, I would probably find it necessary to find each person who read the work and apologize personally. “You know, I really am sorry. I don’t mean to suck, I just do. I really should just stick to writing checks.”
So I am afraid. There, I said it, and I hope hearing my confession makes you happy. For in saying it, I take the power it has held over me. And since I am actually writing it, I AM REALLY taking the power away. I promise to face my fear boldly with a monitor in front of me, and keys clicking beneath my fingers. There are stories, poems, and essays inside of me that will never be told if I don’t tell them. If I don’t breathe the breath of life into them, they shall forever remain lifeless. I am Doctor Frankenstein, and whether beautiful or hideous, these shall be my creations, for only I have the power to create them.
The concept of a lover who doesn’t love is pretty sad. A dancer who doesn’t dance is pathetic. And a writer who doesn’t write… isn’t a writer at all.
Now that’s a blog post.
I think we can all relate to those feelings, at least those of us who are pursuing the passions of our life.
I say write. You’re good. Like any gift, writing is mastered by execution and re-execution. Who cares what everyone else thinks?
Blair, Blair, Blair…
That is beyond blog…that is a diatribe my long-haired friend. I concur with David’s assessment, albeit cliche, that “practice makes perfect”. It is good that you have committed tot he practice and discipline of writing. I find deep thought and the written word have a reciprocal relationship that is flattering at worst. I also find that time spent with pen in hand serves an action of purging…you know; kinda’ like puking your guts after eating too much. My mind often requires a “mass exodus”!! I love Ya’Bro!