On Writing

Today I came across a blog by Virginia Willis ( http://tinyurl.com/lsy8o7 ) who writes: “People who happen to eat and are able to type are now our new food experts. The incredible proliferation and self-indulgent blabber of many food blogs has given people the freedom to hallucinate, ‘I can type and I eat, therefore I am a food journalist’”!

I know this thing is ostensibly about eating and restaurants but I do not consider myself a food journalist or any kind of journalist, although I did major in journalism for about a semester in college. But I am concerned about the proliferation of self-indulgent blabber to which I am contributing. Does anybody care? Does anybody want to read my unedited thoughts? Still, I do consider myself a writer, and the exercise of daily writing primes the pump, as it were. It opens up channels and lubricates the creative process. By typing my thoughts I might stumble onto something I hadn't thought of before -- I might get a pathway into the subconscious.

In the creative writing program at San Francisco State, we were always asked to write essays on "Why I Write," the college professor's version of "What I did on my summer vacation," something to keep the kids busy and fill up the time on the first class of the semester. I always find it hard to respond to this topic.

Usually I start out talking about how I wrote my first story at the age of 6, about a little girl named Julie who had a pony, and every morning the pony would wake her up by sticking its head through her bedroom window and nuzzling her. I wanted a pony, but what I got was attention. I found this interesting. I wasn't athletic or beautiful, but I could write and receive praise for writing. I soon branched out into neighborhood newsletters, became editor of the school paper in junior high and high school. In college, though, I chickened out and didn't major in creative writing. I took a beginning class and was intimidated -- the students were mostly male (now they're mostly female) and the instructor was savage in his criticism. I don't remember his name, but I guess he was bitter about being stuck teaching beginning writing. It wasn't until more than 25 years later that I got up enough courage and enrolled in the MA creative writing program.

But none of this answers the question of why I write.

I once saw a documentary on PBS about the making of the opera, "Dead Man Walking," which comes from the same source as the movie of the same name: the story of Sister Helen Prejean, who counseled death row inmates. The documentary was especially interesting because it alternated between the story of how the opera got written, cast, designed, and produced, and a very balanced discussion of the death penalty. Sister Helen's faith is pure and strong. She believes that there is good in every person and that killing in the name of the death penalty is just as wrong as murder. Of course, she's never lost a loved one to a murderer. The program featured testimony from family members of both victims and murderers. In my typical wishy-washy fashion I can see both sides of the issue. Like the mother of the killer in the opera, I think I would continue to love my son if he did something horrible. I would be devastated and heartbroken and probably would never get over it, but I would still love him.

But I'm straying from my point. At one point Sister Helen was asked how she felt about having her story turned into a film and an opera, and she said something like "art helps us see possibilities and make choices." Art. At what point does writing become art? Is blogging art? Is journal writing art? Newspaper writing? Is what I just wrote about the death penalty art? Does writing have to be published to be art, and is all published writing art?

A painter will often take a sketch pad and draw things she sees, looking for inspiration or trying to find the right image to illustrate an idea or concept. Are those sketches art? You can go into a museum and find sketches by famous artists, Picasso or Degas or Rodin, working studies that they probably never thought would be seen. Yet because they are famous, their sketches -- akin to a writer's notes -- are displayed as art.

I burned out on the creative writing program at SF State. I took every class they offered, some, like short-story writing, more than once. But I never finished the MA. I became disillusioned with the type of stories that won the awards and got published in the student magazine. "Workshop stories," they are called, full of beautiful images and ending with a neat epiphany, usually involving geese flying in formation overhead. That type always wins. Or sometimes post-post-modern exercises, pointless and cold pastiches of images. My reflection in jagged glass. The subway at midnight. Injecting drugs into veins. I can't write any of that.

I write lighter. Maybe it's fluff. Sometimes I think I'm channeling a borscht belt comedian named Morty. I write the way things come out of my mouth. Even when I'm trying to be serious, there is something funny (funny ha-ha) about the way I write. When I used to read my work in writing workshops people sometimes laughed where I didn’t expect it. Maybe it's my delivery, maybe it's what I've written, maybe both. I am what I am: urban, Jewish, middle-aged. And now, a blogger. So sue me.