Realistic expectations

A friend of mine, who has been in a relationship for some time, was asked by his girlfriend why he loved her. He was stumped. He had no idea. He just knew he did. He told me that he thought at the time that he thought it was one of those questions that had no answer such as why he was a writer. He had no idea about that either although that subject had a lot to do with the previous question. His girlfriend was getting tired of waiting for him to make enough money for them to get married. He was not making a lot of money writing and did not want to make the final commitment to marriage while making so little. That relationship is still brewing.

His girlfriend, who is also a friend of mine, said he was not realistic about his writing and wanted her boyfriend to get a "real job". She was not a writer and did not understand why he even tried to get a writing career going as it did not seem realistic. Oh, oh. The word, 'realistic'. They are young and to be fair the girlfriend is working hard in getting a career started herself. She prides herself in being realistic about her career choice which is in nursing and looking at the future when they could have children. They are both in their early 30's and of course the girlfriend's biological clock is ticking. The boyfriend is a very talented writer but barely makes enough money to support himself and often takes part-time work through-out the year. He does not want to lose her, but also does not want to stop writing either. He is hoping he will not get to the "either or" stage in his private life. He will not consider his girlfriend supporting them both. I guess it is male pride. He also loves his life as a writer and would not want to have to choose.

I was reading a article this morning and it said basically that when someone demands someone to be realistic they are really demanding you to accept their version of reality and reject your own. (The Tiny Buddha http://tinybuddha.com/quotes/tiny-wisdom-on-whats-realistic).
As in many things, reality is so relative and in writing is especially so because the writer is putting down a version of his or her reality. A writer can try to put down what everyone will accept as a general version or put down the writer's. I am of the opinion that the writer will be happiest when the more honest version is used; but then history of literature is full of instances of writers producing work that was not accepted until the writer was long dead. That is not a admirable condition. Dead but rich does not make sense. Teaching English is not a bad job when you consider that many writers often drive cabs, work as night watchmen, seamen, sell from door to door, housewives, social workers, and so on. D.H. Lawrence was actually trained as a teacher until he ran off with someone's wife which in his time was a big no no. He could no longer teach anymore.

So what do you do when someone demands that you as a writer be more realistic? I guess it depends on how hungry you are. I have been lucky in that I was working at other jobs. That could be viewed as unlucky too. I had other mouths to feed. I felt like I was living two or more lives and if I could live my life again I would preferred to have lived just one. On the other hand, I don't regret my children. It is so easy to add responsibilities to one's life and I am glad I did not walk out the door.

Now, I do what I want to do. It makes life so much easier. There are so many articles directed towards writers to research the market and then to perform much like a trained seal. I am not a performing writer but an artist who is also a writer. I think if a writer does not want to be realistic or to be more accurate conform to someone else's expectations then don't. If you do, writing becomes a chore and not much fun. You might as well count widgets.

Solitude

I am comfortable being by myself. Most writers that I know do. It is hard to write in a crowd although it can be done. Many writers write in cafes and everyone remembers seeing people with their laptops in coffee shops and the like. I don't know if they are writers but there was this coffee shop that had a number of writers who would bring their laptops in and write. After a while the management of the cafe tried to get rid of them and did succeed although some of the writers were well known. They went under because no one else came to their coffee shop. I was one of them and I always bought coffee and what snacks I could eat. I did not bring my laptop but a notebook. I really got mad at them although it was later that I began to see another side to the argument that I did not consider then.

People are a social group and love being with other people and distrust any group of people who are not like they are. Writers are not the only ones who prefer to do something in solitude. Another group and they are related are readers. They like to read books and one sees them in stores with their cups of coffee and Barnes and Noble are often full of them which is very reasonable. Writers are loners or at least some are as readers often are. You have to be in order to do the kind of work you yearn to do. In biographies of writers, they also tend to take long walks by themselves. That is darn close to radical. There are other loners such as scientists and others too numerous to mention here, but as a group, the ones who are social outnumber the ones who are not.

Some of the problems I have had with friends is they like to spend long hours watching television and they like company doing this. I can't stand it. It drives me up a wall. I suppose it drives them up a wall when I am sitting there reading a book or writing on a computer. I have read an essay or two over the years and even a book, "Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto" by
Anneli Rufus. It is a celebration of solitude. It doesn't change the fact that many people are afraid of being alone. Writers, as a rule, are not.

People working in that coffee shop looked at their customers lost in their own world, peering into their laptops or engrossed in their notebooks, it frightened them or made them feel rejected. It made them feel left out. In the movie, "Looking for Neverland ", the creator of Peter Pan has a wife who gets a lover on the side because she feels left out of her husband's world. She tells him that she expected to be a fellow traveler in his creative journeys but couldn't. In a interview with Phillip Glass, the real life wife of Glass says the same thing. She has her young children but feels left out of the world her husband has created.

Writers, artists, poets, composers travel in wonderful worlds of the imagination but they travel alone although what they create can be shared by their readers, listeners, followers. When the writers were sitting at their tables, they can't share where they are going except in rare exceptions with their writing partners and others feel left out. I am guessing here. But I remember the anger of my own partners in the past when I was working and they just stood there and wanted to know why they could not be a part of what I was doing. It never occurred to me that anyone did not have their own world to occupy. Poor muggles.( I will always be grateful to J.K. Rowland for this insight.)

W. Somerset Maugham said that writers have the best job in the world. I agree, but until I had a steady income from other sources I did not enjoy writing as much as I do now. I don't have to depend on the steady supply of sales from my writing. If I sell, great and if I don't, that is ok too.
Part of writing involves reading which is a very nice part of writing. I read what I write and I read other writers. That is fun too, but is all done in solitude.

Writing and empathy

I was reading the current Bookmarks Magazine and saw a short ad for the book, "Healing Through Empathy: An Expanded Edition" by Dr. Francis Adams. In the short blurb for this book which I have not read or even seen, it states the book "illustrates through actual case histories the vital importance of the doctor-patient relationship and the role of empathy in healing. Dr. Adams calls for a balance between medical science and humanistic medicine. Suggestions are offered for finding the right physician."

It sounded familiar and looked up the name of Patch Adams from the film of the same name and his name is Hunter Adams but the direction of caring for one's patients follows the same path. Empathy is the ability to share the feelings of the patients and to have compassion for another human being. I remember the best doctors and even teachers in my life were those who had empathy towards those who they served.

What about writers? In the books that I enjoyed the most, I remember reading books by authors who seemed to care about the people in their books. Indeed, most writers are those who can put themselves in other people's shoes ,so to speak. I can only speak for myself, but I have often put myself in different characters imagining what it feels like to be older, disabled, a man, a child again and so forth. You can't do that unless you have some empathy for the character to some degree. There are writers out there who have no sympathy towards other human beings and we have all read stories by them. Their characters seem wooden and lifeless. They don't care what happens to them.

J.K. Rowland stated in an interview that when she wrote the demise of a character in one of her books she would cry and get depressed. I have felt the same. Some stories leave me cold and unmoved. I remember reading the book, "The World According to Garp"by John Garner in which Garp's son is killed in an auto accident that left me so upset I could not go to work the next day. I was reading it in unison with others in the nation and more than a few people had to go see their therapists that day. Some comedian made a joke about it. I did not think he was funny.

I don't think an author has to feel empathy to be successful. There are some writers who are very cold and very successful although the ones who are empathic towards their characters outweigh those who are not. I like murder mysteries and appreciate the fact that murderers get caught but not all murder mysteries are those in which the murderers are brought to justice. An exception would be the Dexter series by Jeff Lindsey. Dexter is a sociopath with no feelings but everyone else around him does feel and the reader does not want Dexter to be caught as Dexter kills the bad guy. There is Tom Riley by Patricia Highsmith. There is Marquise de Merteuil from "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos and so much more by writers who feel sympathy and those who do not.

Of course, the obvious inference is for the writer to be honest. When I was a kid, there was a girl I knew who would coo over kittens because that was what girls were supposed to do. But I happened to know she hated them because they were dirty according to her and she hated the way they smelled. She was trying to cultivate an image. I have no idea what happened to her. Maybe she married a veterinarian. Who knows? Still, at the same time, I had professors in my college classes that made fun of writers who loved children and puppies. There was this poem about a child who died when he went back into a burning house to get his mother's purse and died. The professor just stood there and made fun of it and I was fighting tears for a child in the ghetto in New York City who actually did that.

I like poems and stories from writers who care about people, nature, animals and life itself. I like writers who allow themselves to be tied up on the Golden Gate Bridge as one did recently for a cause. I like another who wrote poems about nature and his confusion about his sexual identity. I like the Beat Writers. I never read writers who seem to be parroting what is popular and condemning people for one belief or another. I like writers who have empathy and like my doctor because he cares about his patients. I care about my characters too.

Things that give us pleasure

This morning, I watched the sun come up. The sky was clear for a change and the hues of the rising sun were rosy as the day began. I wanted to run outside and gather it all up and put it all in a box for safekeeping. Since I have come home to Redding, the weather has not been as pleasant as I remember. Unfortunately, this speaks to my habit of hoarding the good things. What am I to do with this?

Well, I write it all down. What else can I do with it? Writing is my way of recording the more pleasanter things and dealing with that I abhor and everything that comes in between. I have the notebooks and journals to prove it. When I win the Nobel Prize (joke) then someone will be interested in them. Until then, I will look at them and know I have gathered the days of my youth, middle age and now senior years. I still get ideas for stories from them but not often. I am one of those lucky writers who only have to put pen to paper or fingers to keys. The story just comes out onto the paper or screen.

This morning was a celebration as I woke up. That in itself was cause for celebration. There will be a time when I won't and Reader you won't have to read an entry about my waking up. Of course, you could read that I woke up dead. I have always loved that saying. I could write: "This morning, I woke up dead. " I think I would have to be a vampire in order for that to be true, but I won't wake up in the morning sunlight now would I?

Listening and reading

This is going to be a bit complicated. Writers read and listen to themselves when they write. Sometimes, it is the one time they know what they think about certain things and ideas. This has been echoed many times. Writers also read in order to keep up on what is happening in their field and to keep fresh on how to express themselves in words. Things get a bit dull when the only books they read are their own. In fact, it is rare that they only read themselves. Wannabe writers are those who do not read other writers. There are a lot of them.

Listening is an important skill for a writer to have. Reading is part of listening. It is more. It is listening to people so that the plots and stories that we write also stay fresh and inviting to the reader. As a writer, I am very curious about people and not because I want to keep writing stories. I really want to learn what is happening out there. When I listen to people, I hear stories I never thought I would ever hear about. I listen to things on television and radio but nothing beats hearing about what happens to people in everyday life. Walt Whitman loved to listen to people who talked about their jobs and what they did when they relaxed. His poetry is full of the things they did and talked about. His poems are full of life and are alive even today.

Every writer knows there is something inside that takes over when one is writing. You have to listen to that extra something, the muse, that leads you over the rainbow to the words, the stories, the poems that you didn't think were there inside of you. It is important never to ignore that inner voice. It just takes over and off you go into the sunset, into the sky and into the words that you did not think were there. Then there are the characters that are created but come alive on their own volition and start talking and telling the writer where to go, what to do and what to put down on the screen, on the paper and where to take the story. All that involves listening.

Now that I think about it, listening is one of the most important thing I do. It is also important not to listen. I don't listen to the Monkey Mind that says I am not a good writer and that I don't have what it takes to be a good writer or I try not to. I also don't listen to human critics who say things about my writing that I don't agree with. I do consider people's opinions and then I either take it or throw it out. That is hard to do. I have a ton of trash cans I put out every week that is full of stuff that people tell me and I put it in those cans and the trash trucks pick them up every week and there is none of that going out and trying to take the stuff out again like I used to years ago. What goes in those trash cans, stays.

It is fun to write. It is also fun to listen. I love listening to people tell me about what they are doing with their lives and how they are trying to survive. That is what all of us are really doing. No one lives a life full of promise and riches. Everyone has sorrows and problems even if the bank balance is full of money. Someone told me once that he would be so much happier if he had some money to throw at his problems. Perhaps. I know this woman who is my age and is sitting in a convalescent home because her health is very poor and no amount of wealth can change that. A wise man many years ago said life is full of sorrows. It was true then and it true now. Listening helps us get out of those nests of troubles and finds ways of dealing with the life we have now whether we are writers or not.

Making things more complicated

I have a friend who is a published poet and does alright with poetry. He feels he is successful because he does not have to pay to have his poems published. Yale University publishes his poems and seems very happy to do so. Of course, he does not make enough money to support his cat. Very few poets do. The reason I bring him up here is the comments he makes about my poems and my writings. He does not think too much about them. That's OK for we are still friends anyhow. I don't think too much about his poems. They seem too academic for me.

He has his graduate and doctorate's degrees from Yale University which is probably why they like to publish him. He also gives lectures there at times. He knows all about the technical terms about poems and literature. I used to know them, but I forgot them. I just don't see the importance of remembering them. I can't hear meter so I don't remember the different forms of them. I have dyslexic hearing which my friend does not think exists. That's his opinion. We are not real close. He is always telling me what I am doing wrong in the poems that I have published here and there. He is also a Buddhist and tells me all of the things I get wrong there too.

I am not writing here that it is important not to remember or that one should. I think one should be true to oneself. When I tried to remember all of the definitions, terms and so forth I was so tied up I could hardly write or even talk. I was afraid of talking to another Buddhist. I remember being at a very nice talk at a Buddhist Monastery and one of the monks was chatting away about the definition of a term that I had not heard about before. I listened and then I realized that I just did not care. I was doing just fine where I was so I went for a walk around the grounds and found someone else doing the same. We just sat and watched some cats playing in the sunshine. I went home and made up my mind to be more honest with myself.

Some people need the terms and definitions as anchors which is very good for them. I don't. Some people need to look up their truths in a book. While I love books, I would rather look within. For me, I think one can make something you love a lot more complicated than it needs to be and a whole lot less fun to do. I love to write and enjoy it tremendously. I did learn the rules and try not to break them, but it is like complete sentences. One should never write incomplete sentences but sometimes the work calls for them. If it does, write them. The Grammar Police will not arrest you. As long as you are communicating, that is the most important issue. That does not mean I don't read the rules for I do. I just remember to have some fun too. I pick and choose what I will do in writing. No one else does it for me.

Honesty

I wrote about enthusiasm on my blog about being healthy and I do tend to communicate my sense of enthusiasm in my writing; but that is not what I want to write about here. Basically, I write here what I have learned over the years hoping that I would put into words those hard learned lessons that I learned over the years. Maybe I can help another writer. Maybe not.

What I did learn was to be honest about what I wanted to write about. If I was enthusiastic, then I wrote that way. If I wasn't, I did not write that way. For a long time, much of the writing that was mainstream was not optimistic or enthusiastic about anything. So, in order to fit in I tried to write like everyone else was writing. I hated what I was doing and a series of writing blocks erupted on my pathway making my road very uncomfortable and disagreeable. I listened to my teachers and professors trying to conform. Since I am like most writers and read, I tried to conform to what I was reading. There was no joy in my writing. I did not have any fun writing, and didn't until I stop listening to all of that crap.

I am not saying that you should be enthusiastic as I am. No, good heavens no. What I am writing here is honesty. Some of what I wrote rings very false now when I read it. I know someone who was very much of a downer as a writer and wrote that way. He hated his life and wrote books that did very well. He never reads his stuff, but he was honest and is proud of what he did in earlier years. Is he more optimistic? No. He still hates his life, but he is married now and feels a bit more optimistic and recently got a job as a syndicated newspaper columnist. That has taken off and he loves that. His books have lost a bit of the edge he had in the earlier years because of that. He thinks he has more of an outlet for his pessimism although he likes to call himself a realist or pragmatist. He reads a lot of William James. Luckily, his book sales have not suffered.

Part of the reason, one writes is that it is fun. If it isn't or it doesn't satisfy something deep inside oneself, why do it? Of course, I could not stop writing if I wanted to. Still, if I lived several hundred years ago and I was writing on paper and it wasn't going anywhere I would still do it. Nowadays, I get to send it out into cyberspace. I even love the word, cyberspace. Ah, life is grand these days and honesty is so much better doing as a writer than anything else.