What is Writing?
If like me you've wondered what "writing" is, then this post is for you. When I started writing I never put any thought into the "philosophy" of writing. Or even the mechanism. All I did was read. And write. I wrote stories. I wrote lines. I wrote poetry even though I knew I sucked. But why did I continue? Becasue it came to me. And it was beautiful--to me.
Honestly what I'm trying to do here, the whole point of this post, is to stress subjectivity. Because I feel that hasn't been stressed enough by people--writers--as much as it should. Now this may turn out to be self vindicatory, fine. I had to write it.
Writing is art. Meaning it requires a bit of ingenuity to produce, and its final end is an aesthetic one. Beauty. Even though nowadays the end of art is more economical or political. But that is not what I'm trying to speak of here. What I'm driving at is that art is subjective. And the art of writing is no less so.
When I started writing I couldn't stop, because, like I said, it came to me--phrases, stories, lines, bon mots, even single words. And I wrote them down, without aiming towards any end but an aesthetic one: to please myself. Again, it was beautiful to me.
But circumstances, expedients pushed me to start thinking that maybe they weren't just beautiful to me. Maybe they were beautiful. Period. Now I cant say that I was wrong Or right. I can only say that in retrospect the only reason I thought so is probably because I was broke and jobless and needed to convince myself I was good at something. That I could make money off something. A talent of mine.
So I decided to write a book and sell it for thousands of dollars and make millions more in royalty.
It was a good dream.
It should be noted also that at this time they stopped coming to me. I became worse, very obviously so. To put it very simply, I became a very very terrible writer.
Again What Really Is Writing?
Back then when they stopped, I started to philosophize. Maybe as a means of getting them back, I dont know. Either way I started to think hard. Why was reading Mark Twain so good to me; for me. Why does it fill me with so much happiness? Isn't it just a book, like the kinds I wrote? Arent they just words?
Of course first thing you consider I considered is grammar. Syntax or whatnot. Maybe I couldn't pull sentences together like Twain. But I could. My sentences never stopped being grammatically correct. At least I knew tenses and figures of speech and whatnot.
But my problem continued, because like I said, writing is art. It is not mechanical or programmed or whatever.
Now I thought maybe its not just that the sentences were not correct, grammatically. Maybe they weren't "fancy" enough, like Twain's and his colleagues. I read a lot of classics, and I thought maybe if i could make my words fancy like them then I'd be a good writer. The result was weird.
Desperation could do nothing for me though. Neither could writing good sentences and writing like frigging Shakespeare.
So--again!--What Is Writing?
The first breakthrough I had was when I figured out the meaning of meaning.
There are two ways to look at it, I figured, you either look at the words, or you look at the meaning. See words are merely words. Grammatically correct or incorrect, archaically structured or not. At the end of the day they're only just words. Which is why Mark Twain could make Huck Finn speak so funny and still make so much sense; still give me so much joy. Because in the end--and this is the greatest irony in the life of a writer--words do not matter! What matters, is the meaning!
The meaning, not the name I call
-- Paradise Lost by John Milton.
Anybody can write words. Anybody can make grammatically sound sentences. But that's not what makes a writer. What makes a writer is the ability to call the attention of your readers to the meaning of words. To make them get it; see it; feel it. That is art. That is meaning. But that is easier said than done.
First Person Subjective
So I knew what writing was. Didn't necessarily mean I could do it, though. But I knew what I had to do. I had to to make people see. But did I really have to do it?
See, it comes full circle. Lord knows it sure did for me. Like I said, the words had stopped coming. Because I was trying not even to write, but to write things for people.
I dont have to make everyone, or anyone, for that matter, see or acknowledge or "get" my writing. I'm not talking about being esoteric now. I'm talking about doing what you love--because you love it! Not for fame or acclaim or whatever. Its an irony, the fact that this is the only way you can write anything worth of acclaim. But, of course, you should never fool yourself! You cant fool your nature.
It is Concluded
So if you ask me what a writer is, if you really ask me, I'd tell you a writer is someone who writes not words, not mere words, but someone who writes the things he or she loves, because he or she loves to do it. That's a writer. Thats what I am. Sometimes I write stuffs that suck, and I'm not afraid to share them, and sometimes I write epic stuff. But guess what? I dont care. I'm a writer and I'm doing what I love. There's no feeling like it. Thanks for reading all. I had so much fun writing this.
As for me though, a writer is someone who can simply get into the minds of their audience by the use of words, so yeah. It all boils down to words, how you use, how you understand the gravity of them, how you'll use them to paint an image as if you were psinting