‘I hope I will always find that conflict in ideas within and without of me, so that I might address it and expand and advance my thinking and ideas, and maybe even those of others.’
It might be said that someone who always thought they would be a writer would have always written, and always have considered themselves a writer. I didn’t.
Even though I’ve been writing one thing or another since I was about 8, it was always ‘one day’ I’ll be a writer. One strangely elusive day…
When I moved a couple of years ago, one of the bulkiest things I had to pack was a cupboard full of bags (a couple of large suitcases worth) of notebooks, typewriter-printed and hand-written papers, the result of hundreds of unfinished stories and ideas. So much creativity, hiding away in those bags and boxes, unread by anyone except me. But, I suppose, nothing is pointless. It was all practice. What’s that they say? One doesn’t start writing well until one’s written a million words? Maybe with all those part-written stories, I’m getting there. Bit by bit.
Despite my not having read any of them since the day I wrote them, I still carry all those piles of papers with me wherever I go. I have no idea how badly written they are, or even what stories lie within (apart from a couple of the more finished ones). I simply take them from one home to the next and stash them somewhere out of sight… until the next move.
Why?
That’s something I really don’t know. Maybe it’s because I can’t remember what’s in them, and have no idea if there might be something I could rescue now I have a little more experience. Maybe it’s that I just don’t want to throw away something that represented my childhood dreams (especially considering I had to ditch my dream of being an astronaut because I suffer such bad travel sickness that I had to cycle the three miles to school rather than take the school bus so there was no way I would last five minutes in a gravity-free environment) and this was the only dream left to me!
Regardless of why I kept them, I still value the hours I spent developing confidence in my ‘voice’. Yeah, I know. Voice is such an elusive thing to pin down, but I have learned, when I write, there are certain things I do and don’t do. One of the ‘don’t do’s is I don’t write at a distance from the characters. I write best in the ‘first person’ or ‘second person close’. One thing I ‘do do’ is to try and stay centered in my body, so that I can ‘be’ the person I’m writing about, feel and describe everything that’s important to them. And I have to try and be honest with issues that I might be aware of, or ones I might have had no previous awareness of, or subjects on which I know I have had childhood-ingrained biases or even ones I somehow developed as a young adult ( for instance, I’ve surprised myself by being more intolerant than I like when others are intolerant). That is a strong part of who I am.
And humanity. What I write must highlight issues of humanity in some way. I mustn’t avoid topics just because they might be controversial or difficult to address. In fact, those topics are probably the ones I most feel should be addressed, especially if I feel nervous addressing them. That’s probably a good sign. I should feel a bit nervous. Especially publishing such stories for others to read. If they make me feel uncomfortable, knowing others will read them, then perhaps those stories are the ones most likely to cause conflict within other people too, and perhaps they are also the ones those readers might take pause and think about.
One day, I am sure I’ll delve into all those bits of paper and read the stories. And when I do, I wonder whether I have always addressed difficult subjects. I wonder if I will find anything that tests my own biases and prejudices of now. I hope I do. I hope that something somewhere amongst all those scribblings might ignite controversy within me. There is nothing like having frictional ideas to wake up your mind and see the world in a different way. I hope I will always find that conflict in ideas within and without of me, so that I might address it and expand and advance my thinking and ideas, and maybe even those of others.
Whether or not I wrote of such things in the past, I hope I always will brave-up and write them in the present and future. I hope also that those who read my stories will appreciate that even if they don’t agree with some of the ideas I write about, they can appreciate that some people have to live with them, sometimes for a lifetime, and the ideas should be addressed. That’s what I hope anyway. Is it a vanity, wanting to know what readers actually think…? Feel free to comment below and let me know.
