Stop
Writing. Now, a recent blog I wrote a couple of days ago, seriously upset
some folks.
Five
blogger friends thought I was writing about them specifically (perhaps some
small ego issue here) and one
took it very personally. All six were wrong. I don’t criticize friends’ stuff
online for the world to see. That’s why I’m member of a few writers’ groups,
where critiquing each other’s works is the order of the day. Stop
Writing. Now was meant to comment generically on the fact that some of the
stuff I force myself to read online really has little redeeming value, at least
to me. The blog was all about realizing we live in a very odd age that begs the
question: Can we claim to be what we want to be?
For
example, are you black because you say you’re black? Are you a woman because it
feels right to be a woman? And are you a writer because for some reason you think
being a writer is neat and will put you in the company of people you’d like to
emulate? You read Hemingway or George Sand (a woman, I might add, despite her
name) and thought, Hmmm, I could do that…
The
first question refers of course to the issues brought up by Rachel Dolezal, a
white woman who decided she wanted to be black and rose to become the director
of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP. Ms. Dolezal darkened her skin,
Afroed her hair and, everyone seems to agree, in spite of the racial muddle, did
a bang-up job of leading the anti-racism organization. The second query
addresses the recently femaled Caytlin Jenner, formerly known as Bruce, an
Olympic decathlete gold medalist. And the writing question? That one, I’m
unsure of. Does firing up Word on a computer, typing a few pages, and posting
them online make you a writer?
I’m
nowhere near objective on this subject.
I’ve been a writer most of my life, and the title is important to me.
I’ve earned a living at it—badly—for a while now, and. I think, paid the
necessary dues. I believe writing is very hard work, often thankless, quickly forgotten
and damned poorly remunerated.
In other
disciplines, associations bestow membership to people who’ve studied, paid money,
and follow certain rules. A doctor or lawyer or accountant has to pass state
exams to be certified and cannot practice without a license. In other professions—and
certainly in the arts, with the possible exception of architecture—anything
goes. I recently had a literary agent whose professionalism I took for granted because
he belonged to a small, boutique literary agency. He vanished, taking three of
my books with him. While I’m certain having my works will not help establish
him in the agent profession, I remain pretty ticked off. This man claimed to be
something he wasn’t…
My
thought is that writers should be working at getting published, paid and read.
Someone who daily makes entries into a diary no one will read is not really a
writer. He or she might be a chronicler of daily life, but unless there’s a
courage and willingness to display one’s work, it’s finger-painting, and a finger-painting
child is not a painter, despite what the parents might think.
The
secondary issue is, are you any good? With self-publishing taking over the
world, hundreds of thousands of books that should never see the light of day
are being published, and by sheer weight and numbers, obscuring some of the
good stuff that does deserve readership. The same is true of blogs. Is your
blog worth reading? Does it move people? Does it make them think, question,
re-evaluate? Does it inspire once in a while? Or are you simply taking up a
chunk of cyberspace simply because everyone else is doing it, and you can too?
I’ve
always liked the modern saying that wearing Spandex is a privilege; it’s not a
right.
I feel much
the same way about writing.
My good friend David sent me an
appropriate quote this morning: “If you don't like someone's story, write
your own.” That’s
from the celebrated Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe.
Achebe
might also have added, “But if it’s not any good, don’t expect me to read it.”
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