Writers...well, what can I say?
I suppose it isn't entirely fair of me to do a blog post on writers, being one. Am I biased? Of course I am! And yet at the same time I know exactly what it means. And I hope you know I'm terrible at solitaire. I prefer Mahjong.
There's a saying that, given a long enough time, a roomful of chimpanzees could come up with the entirety of Shakespeare's "Hamlet". I take umbrage at that. You know, given enough tries (as in the millions of billions) it could statistically be argued that anything could happen. Does that mean it will?
No. Frankly, no. As long as I stare at it, this pile of paperwork next to my desk will not become a glass of chocolate milk. My book will not write itself, especially with a roomful chimpanzees, and where would I get a roomful of chimpanzees anyway? Besides, I haven't got the time to wait on them to figure it out. Or enough bananas.
I'm being silly. Oh dear.
In any case, the argument that chimps could write "Hamlet" removes all talent, work, or imagination out of the piece. It states that literature is nothing more than a random assortment of letters that form words in a particular order. Nothing more. There's nothing to it, really. Anyone, and anything, could write "Hamlet".
I hate this. Now, I'm entirely a proponent that anyone can learn how to write. Anyone can learn how to write well. Can anyone write the next Lord of the Rings or I, Robot? Certainly not! There is a certain something that captures the wildness of the readers, especially on such a great scale as that...and that a writer must have somehow translated into story for their book or tale to be truly great. I don't know exactly what that certain something is. You could call it imagination, you could call it inspiration, you could even call it dreams, but none of those words work quite right because a writer can have all of those and still not have that...something.
There are days when I worry I either do not have that something or never shall. But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop writing, stop trying. You never know when you'll find it. Perhaps you'll discover it later in a book written years in the future, or perhaps you'll discover later that you had it all along. To give up before the grand story is over would be foolish. And so I never give up, nor will I ever tell anyone else to do so, no matter how much their writing style differs from mine.
Writing is like art. There is a base line that can be determined between good and bad writing, but it is founded on things like grammar, format, content, flow, speech, syntax, etc, just as there is a base line of good or bad art that is founded on composition, understanding of materials, color theory, geometry, and history. Neither of these have anything to do with passion and sorrow and dreams. From that point on, the artistic opinions, mental capacity, and styles of individuals take over.
There are plenty of good, fantastic books out there that I will not understand, and probably will not like as a result. One of my faults in art is that if I do not understand it, often I will not like it. At least to an extent. I struggle with Modern art this way. Much of the time I just don't see the story, or the meaning, or the reason, or, frankly, the point. However, there are some pieces of art, some works of literature, that I could never explain given a thousand years to look at them, and I adore them. Why? I don't know.
I do know that when I have writer's block it is rarely because I have nothing to write. It is simply because I'm tired, or busy, or lazy, or any other number of things that keep me from getting down to it and working. It's work! This blog proves that-- I have not run out of things to say even after a few months of writing twice a week. And I don't think I will. There are always new things happening in the world of writing or reading: always new developments in the publishing industry or new books to be read and thought about. There is always something to write.
So write away-- I think I will, in any case.
No comments:
Post a Comment