It has come to our attention that people – friends, the employed, numerous heads-of-state – ordinary people with hormones, dualities, peer pressure and simple anxieties, are having a whale of a time coping. Even my other best friend said, “You order the wine, I can’t pronounce the grapes.”
We suggest writing to cope.
Why do people write? Enthusiasm. Ego. Impulse. Need. Therapy. Validation.
There are as many reasons to write as there are writers. We know that because we all make lists and leave each other notes. People don’t learn to write and then let the skill fade.
One friend was told he should write a book because of all the hilarious things he noticed and retold.
“It would be short one,” he said. He claimed the only thing he ever wrote was his signature and he felt that was overdoing it.
Another friend decided to write a romance novel. “I’m writing it from a male point of view,” he said. He brought 100 typed pages over recently, and surprise of surprises, it was really good.
He wrote about what he knows – a horrendous childhood, meeting someone who changed his life, salty humor and light porn. He marinated his experience, not his imagination. He knows his life isn’t about what he thinks he knows, it’s about knowing what he thinks and how to explain it.
He didn’t feel sorry for himself, didn’t blame anyone, wasn’t looking for revenge and only wanted to find out if he was patient enough to log his feelings into words. It’s been not once, ever, since I’ve laughed, cried, felt emotionally inflated, and then popped, by reading a first draft by someone raised on video games.
Writing is like painting. The house. Have you ever noticed that when people build or buy a house they understand that they can’t do the shingling, plumbing, electricity, heat and air, but are certain they can paint? They can’t. They don’t know how to measure paint, what brushes they’ll need and how to load them, or anything about acquiring a tarp that’s not a bedsheet. They refuse to leave the phone, the dog, the beer, in another room. They believe they are saving money.
Writing is like that. It seems effortless, so simple anyone can do it. Anyone can – that’s its beauty.
Writing leaves a message from someone we just missed. In 1976 I worked in a bar in Denver, which included cleaning the bathrooms after closing. In the men’s room was a chalkboard where someone had written, “Be right back. – Godot.” I just couldn’t erase it and it still cracks me up.
Writing is a way to be heard without giving a speech. Diaries are trendy, and not to be shared, but you know how that goes – ask Kurt Cobain.
There is a rise in popularity of air writing diaries, where the writer simply gets the index finger out and prints or uses cursive in the air. Those people always use additional exclamation points, which should be a felony, but at least they amplify peculiar gusto without emojis.
Writing is personal, even if you’re writing a book that thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people will read and compliment you on.
Others write to fill space.
The End.
“I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” Flannery O’Connor