The Writing Life
I was trying to think my way through the literary dead end I’d driven down, when it hit me. Writers, all of us, are at our best when we’re playing god.
We live to create; call to account; and bestow blessings on real and imaginary subjects. We work in mysterious ways, often surprising ourselves with the results of our labor. Some of us have a following while others still await that revelation. We carry the scars of our readers’ scorn, but quickly forgive and are thankful those readers exist. And don’t you worry, God has more rejection slips in his pocket than all of us will accumulate in many lifetimes.
I have never been able comprehend the full import of what it means to be “God fearing”, but fear of writers is a concept I can recognize and fully embrace. In a free society, after the epochal truth, it is fear of the adjective that ignites this emotion. Our arsenal of adjectives is without limit, and allows the shot pattern to be spread wide or be pinpointing in precision. The perfect adjective can penetrate deep into the hide of the subject and render any kind of first aid useless. A sugarcoated adjective can lull the target into a false sense of well-being, to be ambushed later by one of its sharp pointed brethren. The anguish of not knowing what waits after death barely exceeds the fear of not knowing what words of faint praise will damn the eulogy.
In societies where freedom of expression is curtailed, this fear of writers is documented by the very dictates intended to keep us silent. We may think the fact that God is usually rendered off limits by that same tyranny is a coincidence; but not even the strongest, or most benevolent, dictator can risk allowing the writer to publish, or God’s flock to congregate.
“Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” Remember that one? Well don’t believe it. You should be more afraid of my words than any stones I might throw. I can hurt you with the written word in so many ways. With sticks and stones I cannot be subtle, but with words I can insinuate, cajole, ridicule, and imply. I can be clever and even outrageous in praise of your sworn enemies without provoking or leaving room for a meaningful response. I can make any defense thrown up against my words seem petty and self-serving. I can take as long as I want in my effort. It can be swift and to the point, or it can agonizingly slow and drawn out. If you do not fear the Wrath of God, you should be wary of mine.
We engender life too. Our ideas and characters come of age and work miracles in our short stories, novels, biographical sketches, and through our stand-ins on the stage, the silver screen and television. We create characters to suite our needs. We place their lives in jeopardy, rescue them, kill them off and make you believe they are real. We borrow from the life God oversees to make our own worlds of mystery, beauty, love and hate. We tell stories that rival the Bible and the Koran. We draw lines in the sand, rub them out before the next tide, and finally, when our subjects are doing what we wish them to do, we allow the lines to become more permanent. We take you to witness unforgettable sunsets, vicious storms at sea, the burning of forests, and love between two human beings. Our creations are no more forgettable, and our plots no less credible, than those which happen under God.
We write to make a point, to entertain, to show off, to publish and to eat. We don’t always know from where the words come, or how what we start will ultimately finish. We have our own Gardens of Eden, connected lines of thought are our Moses and Mohammed, and the publisher is our temple. And we are not, as we might imagine God is not, deterred by the prospect of rejection, because we are most alive when we are at work.