“I was working in the lab late one night, when my eyes beheld an eerie sight…”
What do writers do when they are working things out? I’m not just talking about plots and scenes and “writing” stuff. I mean like when they feel like quitting, are faced with a moral dilemma, or just need to kick things around within the group that lives in their head? They write.
It doesn’t have to be a novel or even a story other than the one playing in them at the moment. It doesn’t even have to make sense to anyone else—shouldn’t make sense to anyone else. After years as a minister and then as a nurse, let me just say, having my advice ignored has just about sealed off all inclination to offer oral comments/opinions.
It hasn’t stopped people from asking in hopes I will agree. It just makes getting an unvarnished, unequivocal opinion very difficult to get. I don’t believe this is caused by a desire to avoid confrontation. Although I do not like face-to-face confrontation (done enough of that), I readily seek it out on the written page.
That is not to say that I will argue in writing more than I will in person—I generally won’t. I rarely feel the need to convince anyone of anything. In fact, if I do argue with you, it probably means that I like you and value your opinion. It does mean that, when it comes to written communication, I will deliberately poke a sleeping bear with a stick just to get a reaction.
So, if you’ve been paying attention, you see how writing, for writers, is a kind of therapy or self-evaluation. It’s the writer’s equivalent of women getting together to discuss their feelings. If that sounds sexist, so be it. I’ve never sat around discussing my feelings with other guys, cannot picture myself doing it, and know of no guys who would want to—at least not when sober.
Another reason for this little tête-à-tête is that my Know Jack blog going to be moving away from writing in some ways and moving into a more personal kind of rambling—what I’m reading, what I’m doing, what I’m thinking and what I am writing about.
It’s an experiment. I may be creating a monster. It may not work out the way I foresee it. One thing for certain, I’ll never know until I try it. That’s how experiments work, you see.
I do plan to continue blogging about writing and being a writer/publisher on the House of Honor Books website and FB page where I hope some of the company’s other writers will join in.
You sang the opening line, didn’t you?
Jack
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