THE TRUTH ABOUT WRITING

I attended a writer’s panel at the Barnes & Noble in Westside Pavilion on Friday night. Needless to say, it was an act long overdue. Cile told me last week that I should surround myself with writers, if only to be encouraged or inspired somehow. She was right! The panel of writers that evening talked about their beginnings and how to survive as a writer. One of them said that if a writer’s only purpose for writing is to get published and get rich, then they’re in the wrong business.

The authors reiterated how writing is about more than just putting a story together with hopes that other people will care to read what and how you think about something. Writing is, more than anything, for the one doing the writing. When you’re writing to catch a deadline or score a deal and that’s it, where’s the inspiration, where’s the truth,, where’s the purpose? When you write for yourself, when what you’re typing or scribbling is for you, then THAT’S genuine. They advised that some of writers’ best work is never seen and that really got to me somehow.

I was reminded of Betty Smith’s classic “A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.” (Iya’s favorite book!) In the story, the heroine, Frannie Nolan, is an aspiring writer very early in her youth and her english teacher tells her that writing is a way for people to sort of "right the wrongs" in their lives; that if a situation isn’t carrying through the way we wish it would, then we could just as easily write out what we think SHOULD or SHOULD HAVE happened. Can you imagine the possibilities there? Right all the wrongs in our lives on paper? I COULD FREAKIN’ WRITE FOREVER! Ha ha ha…Anyhow, so much to learn…