Notebook
What I Know About Writing
I've always resisted the urge to put some thoughts down on writing ... what it is, what it isn't.
I mean, there's already, Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury, The Writing of Fiction, Edith Wharton, The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art, Joyce Carol Oates, and, of course, On Writing, Stephen King.
Does the world need more? Apparently, yes ... What I Know About Writing.
Bob Dylan, during an interview, said, "The best songs I ever wrote are the songs I knew nothin' about." Leo Tolstoy, walking by, heard Bob, and he said, “All we can know is that we know nothing." Toni Morrison, on her way to class, said, “But Leo, what of chaos, confusion, disorder?” “That’s it,” said Hunter, looking over the top of his aviator sunglasses, a lit cigarette burning down in its holder, “ya gotta buy the ticket, and take the ride.” At which point Elvis left the building, and Tom Waits climbed up through a buttonhole. Albert Einstein, out for a walk, said, "Imagination is everything." It was then the very fine gentleman, Mr. Keats, standing next to a stranger waiting on a bus, said, “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of the imagination.” William Faulkner, he thought for a moment, and he said, “We’re really nothing more than a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth, and that's good enough for me.” James Joyce, well, he heard it all, and he laughed, and he said, "WTF?" He finished his glass of white wine and walked out the pub door, and putting his hand to the blinding sun, said, “Write dangerously." And me? I looked at Joyce, in that other place and time, and before I could say, "That's a good idea," Émile Nelligan, with crumbs of food in his beard, fell out of his chair laughing—mad as a hatter, and he said, "What is left of us in this brief storm?"
Good question.
And Sheila Watson, in her remembering, whispered, "Émile, it's okay, for it is true, the word is a flame burning in a dark glass."
And that’s it: What I know about writing.
Oh, and of course, this: The joy in reaching to the truth in writing is having the faith to trust that it can be found, provided one looks to the pulse of blood running through the veins of thought, and not to the meaning of it.
