Welcome to Gaia! ::

Because i realize my version of "activity" in this guild is very different from the average manga loving/ full of stories to compose sort of gaian. I thought it might be a good idea for everyone who reads this to take a minute and try to put into words. Just what the purpose of writing is in your life. What brings it out of you? Is it a form of catharsis? What does activity in the guilds mean to you? Are there certain writings too personal to be shared in an open forum?


In short "Why do you write?"


To give us some wise words to contemplate i've just finished transcribing this essay. I hope everyone reads and enjoys it.



from "Writing Down the Bones - Freeing the Writer Within"

by Natalie Goldberg

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Why Do I Write?




Why Do I Write?" It's a good question. Ask it of yourself every once in a while. No answer will make you stop writing, and over time you will make you stop writing, and over time you will find that you have given every response.


1. Because I'm a jerk.
2. Because I want boys to be impressed.
3. So my mother will like me
4. So my father will hate me.
5. No one listens to me when i speak.
6. So I can start a revolution.
7. In order to write the great American novel and make a million dollars.
8. Because I'm neurotic.
9. Because I'm the reincarnation of William Shakespeare.
10. Because I have something to say.
11. Because I have nothing to say.


Baker Roshi from San Fransisco Zen Center said, "'Why?' isn't a good question." Things just are. Hemmingway has said, "Not the why, but the what." Give the real detailed information. Leave the why for psychologists. It's enough to know you want to write. Write.

Yet it's a good and haunting question to explore, not so you can find the one final reason, but to see how writing permeates your life with many reasons. Writing is not therapy, though may have a therapeutic effect. You don't discover that you write because of lack of love and then quit, as you might in therapy discover that you eat chocolate as a love substitute and, seeing the reason, stop (if you're lucky) eating Hershey's chocolate bars and hot fudge. Writing is deeper than therapy. You write through your pain, and even your suffering must be written out and let go of.

In writing class painful things come up--the death of a husband, throwing the ashes of a dead baby into a river, a woman going blind. The students read the pieces they just wrote and i tell them they can cry if they need to but to remember to continue to read. We pause when they are finished and then go on to the next person, not because we ignore their suffering--we acknowledge it--but because writing is the aim. It is an opportunity to take the emotions we have left many times and give them light, color, and a story. We can transform anger into streaming red tulips and sorrow into an old alley full of squirrels in the half light of November.

Writing has tremendous energy. If you find a reason for it, any reason, it seems that rather than negate the act of writing, it makes you burn deeper and glow clearer on the page. Ask yourself, "Why do I write?," but don't think about it. Take pen and paper and answer it with clear, assertive statements. Every statement does have to be 100 percent true and each line can contradict the others. Even lie if you need to, to get going. If you don't know why you write, answer it as though you do know why.



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Why do I write? I write because i kept my mouth shut all my life and the secret ego truth is I want to live eternally and I want my people to live forever. I hurt at our impermanence, at the passing of time. At the edge of all my joy is the creeping agony that this will pass-- this Croissant Express at the corner of Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis, a great midwestern city in mythical America, will someday stop serving me hot chocolate. I will move on to New Mexico where no one knows how it feels to be here with the sudden light of afternoon, the silver of the ceiling, the half-smell of croissants baking in the oven.

I write because I am alone and move through the world alone. No one will know what has passed through me, and even more amazing, I don't know. Now that it's spring I can't remember what it felt like to be in forty below. Even with the heat on, you could feel mortality screaming through the thin walls of your house.

I write because I am crazy, schizophrenic, and I know it and accept it and I have to do something with it other than go to the looney bin.

I write out of total incomprehension that even love isn't enough and that finally writing might be all I have and that isn't enough. I can never get it all down, and besides, there are times when I have to step away from the table, notebook, and turn to face my own life. Then there are times when it's only coming to the notebook that i truly face my own life.

And I write out of hurt and how to make it okay; how to make myself strong and come home, and it may be the only real home I'll ever have.

~


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This was written at the Croissant Express, April 1984. If I wrote it now, a different response might come up. We write in the moment and reflect our minds, emotions, environment in that moment in that moment. This does not mean that one is truer than the other--they are all true.

When the old nag in you comes around with "Why are you wasting your time? Why do you write?," just dive onto the page, be full of answers, but don't try to justify yourself. You do it because you do it. You do it because you want to improve your handwriting, because you're an idiot, because you're mad for the smell of paper.


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I write because the only thing left of my universe are my memories. But ever since I arrived here on earth, it seems like my mind is being rewritten and I'm slowly becoming someone else. My only hope of keeping what's left of my universe alive is by writing my memories down.

Well, I'm just going to start by saying that ever since I was young, I never liked reading or writing. It was boring. I mean, who wants to WRITE? That's like schoolwork. But you know, I never really became interested in it until the last year or so. I read more in like sixth grade, I think it started, and eventually, I had a few great English teachers who really inspired me. Now, I even want to take writing to be a career if I can. I'd like to, as I'm sure a lot of teenagers my age would, be able to write my own novels and illustrate them as well. Though I enjoy writing, I've been drawing longer and I'm more interested in it. But there something through art and literature that can pull you into another world. It's sort of like an escape. Something different. There are far more places to explore, things to see within the depths of your imagination rather than what you have in front of you sometimes. As you can tell, I'm a bit of a fiction writer.

I write because I'm bored. I write because I'm inspired. I write because I need to get away from things. I write because I want something different. I write because I want to make it a career. I write because I want to share my thoughts. I write for many reasons.

This is being written last because i now realize that this is just way too long and it's gonna be a trial for anyone to get all the way through. i want to thank each and every person who posted. The range of different methods of operation and the sheer honesty apparent in each individual post just fills me up with a sense that someone took the question seriously. If anyone hears from Moldy Tofu tell him i was really amazed with his response. It rang true in my reading as "the real thing" and it was very brave of him to share those details with us all.

By the way there is no reason this thread needs to ever die. Make a post. Do it a second, third, or 27th time. i waited a while in the belief that everyone would get to posting here eventually. This is just me learning to watch a thread grow as i am not used to maintaining one. i don't know what all i accomplished but this is me getting ready to pass out at about 2:30 saying "write your a** off!!!!" i have a new piece of Palanuik that i need to finish transcribing. i think you kids are gonna dig it. Well here is what i came up with. See you tomorrow and hopefully many days and endless nights after that.....




First attempt writing session. Typed up about a week ago i'm thinking.
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Why do i write?

i'm trying to rationalize this to myself by using my age as a base reason for writing. That is to say since i was at one time young and aimless. Without solid footing in a job, relationship, or geographic path of travel. i'm gonna be 34 on August 27th and i can't say that a thing has changed for the most part. So on one hand i look at writing like i'm making sense of the things i've seen change in the time that would seem to have passed in angst and futility so far. On the other side of "the approach" it's like i went to community college and got an associates degree in Art Foundation and maybe between that and all the time spent obsessed with music in college radio towards the end of my time at Henry Ford. This would be the last medium to come to terms with? i majored in black and white photo and minored in illustration. Not having a firm grasp on computers (my downfall assuredly) it was all for nothing. i've watched lovers, records, music & fashion trends, dead end jobs, plans of escape, and the economy of the country i'm stuck in come and go, go, go.

Back in the "Ritalin kid days" of my college experience. i started scratching poetry into journals. i got into the beats (beatnik writers) through music heros like Dax, Ogre, and a hand full of left field abstract hip-hop poets. i've opened up to explore many great poets and writers while becoming ever increasingly obsessed with the never ending spectrum of the space rock/ ambient/ techno/ [insert industry hype terminology buzz terms here] / IDM/ beyond hip-hop/ endless beat continuum. i've moved to Pittsburgh and back twice. Lived with at least 2 significant others. went to endless concerts, raves, clubs, following music through an endless cultural metamorphosis. Hosted a popular radio show for at least 5 years. Done everything in my power to attain records, burns, downloads, mp3s, 45's, mix tapes, and mini disc mixes. i've been alone yet felt like somebody. i've been in a room full of friends and acquaintances and just wanted to disappear. i was a part of a downtown Detroit "loft clique". One of those pathetic hipster cliches. i've been in the middle of what's happening. Now i feel like i'm on the very outskirts of humanity.

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tonight's stab at summing it up (7/22/10) :

Why do i write?


The irony of trying to refine my writing approach is that there was probably a time when i could have answered this brief and honest with a response to the effect of: "Well i don't really write." or "i'm new to the writing game and i really haven't been here long enough to say."

It seems like there's a certain aspect of learning to be descriptive in your write up that can make one feel "talky". Like your just filling up paragraphs without anything getting said. A million poems and essays suffer these sad deaths every day. Unfortunately as the internet bloomed with millions of blogs i think that the general consensus was: "These are a bunch of every day people just going off at the mouth about whatever." So in a sense the blogs died as quickly as they could have ever had a buzz. The reign of social networking sites in their myriad forms has brought about the era of the passing hello email. i'm as guilty of writing these as anyone else. The basic attempt to connect with someone out there. i find it surreal to be on gaia as most of the kids on here are young enough to have grown up with computers as a part of their daily lives from as far back as they can remember. It's different for the kids of my generation because in some ways it can feel like the internet is not our turf. This can be a big set back for any aspiring talent who wants to get their pieces refined to be presented in an open format.

Do you see what's happening here? This is my second attempt at simply stating "Why i write" and it's like i jumped on a horse bare back and took off into the night. Maybe you followed me. Maybe you didn't. i was just losing you, losing me, losing out on really answering the question.


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It's about 2 A.M. and i'm still trying to get this damn post polished and transported from this text box to the guild. There has been a surprise anthem to this thread and i'm posting where you can download the song free and try to embrace where i'm at bottoming out emotionally waiting for sleeping pills to give me the necessary shove off to dreamland. My sandman must look like a ripped security bouncer cause i'm a quite a handful it seems. O.K. the song isn't out yet and it's by "Kisses" it's entitled "People can do the Most Amazing Things" xlr8r tends to focus on the tech/ producer aspects of electronic music so though the song isn't even out yet. Their little study session is based in the "Pete Wiggs Remix" so that style and the ability to remix are stressed in this MP3 criticism:

http://www.xlr8r.com/mp3/2010/07/people-can-do-most-amazing-thing


i think that maybe my need to write comes from the desperate need to find answers: my own, someone else's, something i can cling to. i have a love of modernism and cubist experimentation. "Freeing the word from the sentence". That's what is often said about cubist form. What i think cubism stresses. To help clear things up. Is the power of the word. The word without sentence structure. Conjuring images and sparking the brush fires of rampant dreams and horrifying nightmares. Taking us through the whole spectrum of human emotion and consciousness. Straying us in the lonely alleys of self honing. Re-connecting us from all the things we may have lost touch with. Challenging our belief systems and possibly small minded / preconceived ideas. If we're gonna be the love we seek in the world. If we are to make the attempt to be more loving souls in this desperate journey. It has to in part come back to self analysis. Journal entries are a chance to explore our repetitive thought cycles. Fiction and poetry can be a way to test drive the chaotic and never ending stream of ideas and thought forms that flow out of us. When your in need of the craft's ability to take you so very far away. Nothing else even comes close. Plus it's a great excuse to listen to my ipod roughly forever and a day.


~

la dee da,



Lyekka

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