It started as a question in an email, and once I got to ripping along, the missive took on its own life, and started to become an entry here….
Round a-bout, 4/30/03 11:51 PM, ya’ll said:
> My main point, if you’re going to read someone’s diary, forget what you read
> and move on, don’t you think? Especially since I totally viewed this entry as
> a goofy, make a story type entry. But he has taken it to heart. Maybe I
> should just close down my diary.
Pass it along if you like:
I stumbled across your sister’s online diary, lord, I don’t remember when. It was frank and refreshing in a weird way, like it was normal. Everyone else online is so caught up in being hip, too cool for school, or whatever.
I learned, a long time ago, that anything written, is written for publication.
2nd grade, I had a poem published. Caught me off guard. I mean, it wasn’t much [did involves stars, though>, and I had some drawings of flowers published, too. But it was just for fun, trying to impress the teacher. Or something.
At the tail end of my “angry young man phase” [post adolescent trauma>, I had one of my journals discovered. Again, bad call, but the message was clear, anything written is written for publication. “Those are my private papers!”
A few years later, I stopped by to see some friends who lived in an “animal house” in Sherman, TX, and a handwritten letter from me was up on their icebox. Just weird , you know?
Eventually, I got serious about an English degree after getting close to 30 – the first time. I turn 30 every year, now. During that time, I worked for the school’s paper. One of my movie reviews was clipped and used in a tech writing class, as an example – it was a review of, oddly enough, a cowboy movie, and the line was something about “long, ropey strings of bull snot” – slow motion action of a bull ride.
A couple of years ago, while I was in England, I had my girlfriend-de-jour staying at my place, taking care of the cat. I showed her how to use email. She also found my ‘not-online’ journal. Bad news. I’d written about how sex, one night, hadn’t been particularly enthusiastic. I caught a boatload of crap for that comment. Not to mention the other ramifications of her discovery.
Now, of course, I also felt violated because, after all, some of the material was private and intended only for myself. But it wasn’t password protected, and there it was, in print, on the computer. Not even artfully concealed.
But if it’s committed to print, or published, then it’s fair game. I can’t remember the author, one of the dead white guys, oh, here it is:
“If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate. The ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of little old ladies.”
Bill Faulkner, in an interview in 1955. Damn, quote’s older than me.
I get carried away, reading certain works of fiction, because, in my mind, I can see something really happening. Now, as a writer who has direct line to his readers, I get – ask about the Medieval French Quote sometime – an almost instantaneous response.
Not long ago, I spun up a metaphor about a paper shredder. Two days after the scopes posted, one of my fishing buddies calls to ask “How did I know that he’d moved the paper shredder out of the garage into the [home> office?”
I feel your pain at having your work “discovered,” and I really do understand when someone takes it altogether in a wrong light.
Funniest thing about my canon of work? My deepest, darkest secret? I write to amuse myself. I don’t do it for anyone else. Some of the links don’t make sense to some people. Doesn’t bother me a bit. The links, the metaphors, they make me smile. But when I’m working, actually typing these stories, I’m serious. Really, really serious.
I discovered, almost ten years ago, that I was very earnest and serious about what I was doing, but sometimes, readers found meaning where I didn’t intentionally put it. Better yet, when I’m being serious, or think that I’m being serious, some folks find it downright amusing. Funny, even. My pain, their gain.
Writing, the act of creation, is done without thought. Anytime I let my brain interfere with what the muse is dictating, I get in trouble. I get this terrible frown when I work. I’m busy, tediously running nouns into verbs, trying to push a point in one direction, then looking and realizing that it’s late, and I’ve gone on too long.
In this week’s Pisces scope, there’s a story about a nail in tire. Sure as can be, I’ll hear from at least one Pisces person who has a flat tire. Wow. The point had nothing to do with flat tires, had to do with allocating resources, financial and otherwise.
Your diary entry was one about how you felt. “Feelings” cannot be disputed. Old rhetoric trick, preface an argumentative comment with, “I feel….” Rebuttals are a lot more difficult.
Now, back to the Pisces with the flat tire – I thought it was about allocating resources and maybe watching spending. Your tale was about how you felt about something. To that end, I have a long list of disclaimers, just to make sure that people know that no Red Headed Capricorns were harmed in the creation of this document.
I had a guy write in yesterday, warning me that my Capricorn comment might hurt my friend’s feelings. Hardly. If you know her like I do, you’d realize that she will laugh. Shoot, she keeps a stash of those things in my medicine cabinet. Heck, she’s the one who explained the difference between what was already there [normal> and what she liked [heavy duty>.
But I’ll bet I catch some ire from more than one reader who finds my humor distasteful.
And that’s the way it goes. I figure, if I’m not causing a little irritation for some people, then I’m not doing my job right.
I’ve been misquoted on this recently, but being the studious academic that I am, I’ll give it the proper citation. I’ve read one book by Stephen King. It was book about writing. He wrote, “I write because I can’t not write.” (At least, that’s the way I remember it. And it’s way too late at night to look it up now.)
Works for me.
Kramer Wetzel, Texas Shakespeare Massacre
O theft most base,
That we have stol’n what we fear to keep!
Troilus in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (II.ii.92-3)
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