I don't hang around a lot of writers. I don't even have any writer friends but I've recently joined an online community of writers that I've come to cherish, marvel and occasionally wonder at. I've come to cherish them because as fellow writers, we understand each other's neurosis and provide the care and support to each other that only fellow writers can give. I marvel at them because they make me appreciate how privileged I am to pursue and earn a living from something I love doing. But they do make me wonder sometimes because let’s face it, writers are decidedly nuts.
Allow me to explain.
Writers write because they’re compelled to write. Rejection slips and jeers from family and friends not withstanding, they continue writing because, “I would die a slow death if I didn’t.” Writers empathise with their characters and miss them in ways that are difficult to explain to ‘normal’ people. I’ve been in social settings where the compulsion to get back to my characters has been almost too much to bear. It’s rather like the love affair that never was except in a writer’s case, everything is imagined and played out on the computer screen.
I don’t know of any other breed of people that has perfected the art of studying people and life. Show me a writer and I’ll show you someone who can weave a complex tale of colours and emotions within 10 seconds of being in any environment. It is a very annoying habit that only writers can identify with. I remember being introduced to someone. I just didn’t ‘gel’ with the person and later, made my views known to the person who introduced us. “I thought you guys would get on. He’s a screenwriter,” said my friend. No wonder I didn’t ‘gel’ with the screenwriter. He was studying me and I hated it. And I only picked up the studying part because I was a fellow writer. Nobody else did. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be in an environment where I’m not filing away the scenery and activities in some part of my brain ready to be used later when I’m in front of my much loved (read: abused) computer. I wonder away for 5 seconds and shake my head in rueful admission; I wouldn’t last 5 seconds. Writers study life because life makes art and writing is an art form.
A perfectly splendid vocation
Yesterday, I finished editing my brother’s essay on Roman concrete. I can tell you a million other ways to spend my time but I’m ‘the writer’ so I’m lumbered with writing ‘jobs’ that I didn’t ask for. But I look at it positively. How else can I broaden my knowledge of subject matters that I would never have heard of much less work on? For example, while editing my brother’s essay, I found out Roman concrete and social determinism could be used in the same sentence. There’s a lot to be said for knowledge acquisition.
I’m yet to discover why writers are so neurotic. Maybe it’s the thick skin required to survive in a world where the writer’s interests are increasingly being thrown to the dogs. As I type, today’s newspaper headlines are filled with howls of outrage from writers and writer’s organisations at news of a proposed book pricing structure that effectively puts power in the hands of big publishers, supermarket chains, a handle of bestselling writers and celebrity ‘books’. It seems to me that the writing industry, that last doyen of professional respectability, is dangerously close to selling its heart to the god of commercialism. First rights, copyrights, second and third rights, subsidiary rights, foreign market rights, movie and television rights, electronic rights, reprints, text rights, all rights, readings and personal branding are factored in when considering a writer’s work. Back in the day, writers just wrote. Now they write and are at the beck and call of publishing magnates. The onslaught of badly written self-published books, vanity publishing, dubious agents and print on demand has made publishing a very dirty and competitive industry. With all these going on, is it any wonder writers are a decidedly odd bunch of people? It’s either that or the amount of time they spend with their imaginary friends in front of a computer screen that’s made them that way.
Who can understand the frustrated writer on his fourth rewrite and the complete hatred he feels towards a novel that made his heart sing just months before? Who can understand the fear of approaching deadlines and inevitable writer’s block with the pressured editor on the other end of the telephone? All these with a 9-5 and family equally vying for one’s attention. It’s a wonder some people persist in writing. Yes, I know, “I would die a slow death if I didn’t.” Yawn.
I say there must be a more enjoyable activity to engage in because let’s face it; no one would want to write if they knew the level of hard work involved, a lot of it, sweat and blood. It just proves what all writers have always known but the world has yet to discover; we can’t all be writers even if we all secretly desire to be.
