Why I Write

The blurb “About OLLI” reads: “The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas…is a member-led, vibrant learning community of more than 1,300 retired and semi-retired adults…Our classes are purely for enjoyment — there are no tests, grades, or credits. Prior college experience is not required, only a desire to join our peers in the joy of learning. Each of our study groups is led by OLLI members who bring a lifetime of personal and professional experience to their classrooms….”

And so as much as an attempt to get out of the house and form new relationships, I laid down my bucks and enrolled. I took two courses having to do with writing and was disenchanted with both. I contacted the institute’s administrators as I wanted to present my own workshop, one grounded in the nitty-gritty of writing, the craft and the need to self-clarify one’s self as a writer.

I got the opportunity to teach in the spring semester and immediately began to think about the syllabus. And the first question students need to explore is why they write, and so this essay is my response to that very question.

I cannot answer the question even after four decades. I don’t know why I write, although, of course, I have all kinds of feelings about that conundrum. I write to express myself. I can’t play drums, ride a horse, play third base, change my car’s spark plugs, but I can type or hold a pencil in hand. Since I am a sedentary self, writing is an “easy” way to send out what I am feeling. I have a need to say something about myself and my place in this world. Oh, by the way, you cannot be taught to be a writer; you can be taught tricks of the trade which are helpful. You make yourself into a writer. I find that a cheerful hope and opportunity. No one is required; like eating dinner, you don’t need assistance.

Recent readings of evolutionary scientists have convinced me that we are bags of sinew, flesh, bone and gristle that contain packets of DNA that run everything; we are sacks of fat, shit and piss driven by genes struggling to survive and an elephant’s trumpeting, a Van Gogh painting, and Magellan’s voyages are just the diversions of being human, but the real dynamic is the self-gratifying needs of genes to mutate and evolve. We, in short, are held hostage to our genes.

So my need to write is not genetic, merely surface matter, but that surface matter is all I know consciously. And all that is beyond remarkable.

I have discovered over the decades that I don’t write to be published, although to be in print is sweet and really satisfying fun. I write not to be read necessarily, although that is sweet as well, for it leads to conversation, good feelings and good talk.  I don’t write to be known, for I have never earned enough royalties to buy a good meal with. One is lucky to sell 500 paperbacks; self-published authors sell much fewer than that. So why do I write given all the exceptions listed here?

I write because I am compelled to do so by my feelings, thoughts, all that noise in the crankcase of my mind. I believe that writing is an ordering of all that cacophony we each have in our minds. You cannot say it as well as you can say it in print.

Brenda Uelard in If You Want to Write writes: “Tell me more. Tell me  all you can. I want to understand more about everything you feel and know and all the changes inside and out of you. Let more come out.”

So writing gives me organized expression, makes what I feel and think  self coherent. It is not subject to evaluation, criticism, or critique. I write my expression to communicate what I am in a coherent way, not only to make myself clear to you but really to make myself very clear to myself. “The unexamined life is a life not worth living.” I subscribe to that.

So I write as an expression of my personal awareness. Given that, any other need such as publication or marketing what I have published are ancillary needs. They have their place. I would not have gotten this writing job if I did not have works published. Nevertheless, over the decades I have determined or fate and the market has made clear to me that I will not be considered a near great or great writer. I never thought that of myself. So what did I think of myself as I struggled to master my craft which is an impossibility?

It all came down to my very personal need to pursue what I felt inwardly and to elucidate it first to myself, with the hope that if it was well expressed any other human being would understand. And that did come true. A clarified awareness of my self was my task, although years ago I had no idea that was what I was doing. It is much like wandering into an underground sewer until one sloshes oneself free.

Continued writing brought daylight. Practice made it so.  I set no deadlines. I wasn’t even that hard on myself. I wrote until skill appeared, like the first glassine sheets of ice on a pond during a wintry day. As a writer you need to be obsessive — or a little nuts. Writing is like parenting, you are never done with it.

I can say that while I’m writing I just feel good, feel better as me. As I pound the  keys for this essay, sentences come out, so fascinating, coherence appears or if not, I can go back and repair all that; but it is the flow that makes it all, as if am a paper boat set sail on a stream running down a city block, unfettered.

Now the hardest part of all. Do I lie to myself and thus lie to you, the reader? I speak here of telling truth and how to go about that. How does one avoid the slippery self lies we all use to get through the day, through life? What good is any expression if soiled by untruths? What good am I if I live my life that way?

I just associated to Citizen Kane. As a former psychotherapist I have been trained to go with associations, much like thumbing a ride on a road. In one early scene Welles is seen composing a statement of principles for his new newspaper and in later scenes he has much violated his own “truths,” and reminded of that by Leland, his now former friend.  I suppose truth, for my purpose here, is just not lying to yourself, to be honest. It is the latent river in every therapy session. If you want to lie, I guess it is best to lie to others; but to lie to yourself, makes you an outer-directed human being, a decal fit to go on a  refrigerator door, a Zelig.

What does this have to do with being a writer? Never lie. Each sentence should struggle to be truthful to the best of your ability. Reared as you were by parents who taught you right from wrong, as best as your own self learning has given you: tell the truth. The wondrous serendipitous result of this struggle to tell the truth is that you will learn to tell the truth if you are at it for a long while. All writing should have the Hallmark imprimatur on it — “If you care to send the very best.” If you wish to be meretricious and still write, send a Norcross card.

Dostoevsky said: “Never, never lie to yourself. Don’t lie to others, but least of all to yourself.” “Who do you really care about and love? Who are you?” And Uelard adds, “And one of the very worst, self-murdering lies that people tell to themselves is that they are no good and have no gift and nothing to say.” (Italics mine.)

One last thought. Excellence! I have a thing about that.  Some of us from long-lasting habit match up socks and with a twist bind them together and others, like me, roll them up into a ball. Does it make a difference? No, but for me it is a way of doing things.  I would suggest that you adopt excellence as if you adopted a child. If you submit a manuscript to an online manuscript, follow the rules of the professional; if you think the essay is not quite good enough (see truth) don’t submit it; only share your best, share that which is excellent about you as a writer. Excellence, to my mind, is an expression of personal self-esteem. To do less is not to wash your hands after visiting the rest room.