Writing What I Want To Write

I have the hardest problem in writing what I want to write. I have all of the good intentions of writing about this subject or that and then I start to write and I end up with something I didn't want. I end up with some lukewarm piece that is thin, lackluster and not at all what I wanted to put down. It's not that I am writing something that wasn't as good as I wanted to write, but that I wrote something I did not mean. I did not put the whole truth down. Fear kept me from pushing the keys down.

Many writers have this problem and I am one of many; but I don't want to be one of many. I want to write or put down what is in on my mind. Is it that I fear other people's reactions? Am I afraid that people will react to the true me? I have been attacked for my opinions before. I was even physically attacked one time and had to call the police. I got suspended from my day job for doing that, but got it back when the union protested this treatment.

I think it extends into my fiction and poetry. I don't think it is a good thing. I wish I could put down what the solution to all of this is, but I don't have it. I have learned lately the first thing in any difficult situation is defining the problem. Well, the problem involves fear. I am afraid. I am afraid of rejection because I don't have enough confidence in myself as a writer. Marcel Proust was afraid of writing about homosexuality at first but did so slowly even though it was not accepted in France when and where he lived. He ended up writing the greatest novel of the 20th century although he was always afraid people would find out he was gay himself. He found the courage. I don't have a sexual orientation problem and even if I did it would be acceptable in today's climate.

I think when a writer puts down her or his words, they are presenting themselves naked to the world. I have always had a very thick wall around me. Obviously, many people do and I am no different. I can still feel the rejection when who I was did not meet with acceptance from my family when I was a child. I was not loved or welcomed by my peers, family through the years. I had not realized that until I wrote this that I was hurt by all of this rejection. All of this is being brought out by my current re-reading of the book, "How to Suppress Women's Writing" by Joanna Russ. I find the book to be very accurate. I think I am beginning to understand.

Women generally exist and think in solitude and it is hard to be honest when everyone slams down on them for this honesty. I can relate to that. Marcel Proust who I wrote about earlier had his mother for a long time and other male intellectuals, but a woman rarely runs across an intellectual for she is condemned for being one and if she is one she is one in secret. We are taught to treasure our families, children and even pets before we treasure our books and ideas.
A woman who cares about ideas is one who denies she is a woman. That is pretty heavy stuff. Even writing all of this is darn hard and difficult.

Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein" but there has been many articles and essays in which it was supposed that it was her husband, Percy Shelley, and even the other men at that party in which the idea of the monster was first brought up by Mary that she wasn't really the author. Jane Austin wrote her novels in the kitchen of her house and George Sands had to take a man's name to get published. Currently, there has been problems in women getting their books reviewed. This problem is far from being resolved. Being a writer is an assault on self confidence whether male or female but it is still more difficult if the writer is a woman.

As a writer, I have face criticism from every quarter of my life. There are no fans out there egging me on to keep writing as there are for men. Maybe if I had some best sellers, I might have a few. I have to do it on my own. The thing is I really love to write. I think I have something to say. I just have to convince myself that I have the right to say it although no one in my family is interested in what I write. I no longer tell family members when I am published, they don't care. I have been on posters and although one was kept, the other was destroyed while I was in Korea. All of the publications my writing appeared in was destroyed. All my books were given away. I exist in a vacuum and I don't think I deserve this, but this is the way life is.

No one is going to read this. I know this, but I don't care. I am alive and kicking right now. I am trying to be who I am on paper or on this screen and if I am not it would not make any difference anyhow. I might as well be me. My life is my life and what happens in it is my doing. I like what I write. It gives me a lot of pleasure just writing and reading. It really does not matter if no one cares as much as it does matter that I care. If a writer does not care what he or she writes then it will all be crap. I don't write crap. I write my stuff and I am going to try and care more about it. As the hair commercial says, because I am worth it.