Edouard Vuillard: Album Cover for Landscapes and Interiors (1899)

"I became AWriter by typing with my two-and-a-half typing fingers: Another Summer."

The Muse recalls always thinking of me as AWriter because I always seemed to be writing, but I had not gained the discipline being AWriter requires. She says she thought I'd become a consultant to collect material, and she might be right. To my mind, AWriter, a real one, writes. Their writing can't be contingent upon how they feel or whether they're inspired unless they trade in mere transcription. I once believed writing required inspiration or some other high-minded situation to express itself. That became a self-defeating belief because it often dissuaded me from writing. It generated excuses instead. Whatever else might be the case, a straightforward fact underlies the whole writing business: Writers Write. It's just as simple and certainly no more complicated than that.

That said, though, it must matter what AWriter writes. Of course, it does, or it certainly might matter. What AWriter writes only ever exists after they finish writing. Before, they might hold promise, but without some finished product, they've not written. Since Writers Write, their not writing never supports the notion that we're dealing with AWriter. AWriter remains perfectly free to choose whatever they might desire to focus upon. He might choose a clever title and an obscure topic, but these serve as no more than bookends. They can't become books until they've been written, and that writing requires enough discipline to finish what they first just imagine starting.

My greatest works will eternally remain unwritten, for the most perfect instantiation of every writer's work appears at the moment of conception. Like humans, a moment of conception never quite results in a person. Nine months later, Gods willing, the beginning of a human might appear, still needing years of acculturation before it's capable of standing on its own. How many iterations of apparently meaningless rituals and customs must be repeated before anything results? Those apparently meaningless rituals and customs define what AWriter does. There's no glamour involved, and it's an inherently lonely business.

I once proposed setting up a table in a bookstore window where AWriter might labor under the indifferent eyes of passersby. I thought it might attract some attention and get a few people talking. I imagined a succession of "famous" authors clamoring to appear, thereby helping the inevitably struggling bookstore succeed. AWriter might be forgiven for holding such fantasies, for there's little to recommend the daily practice AWriter embraces. It ultimately became something I couldn't quite not do, more a necessary act of elimination than one of sublime creation. I remained a dabbler as long as I was only dusting off the old keyboard on special occasions. I could and did produce some worthy products, but only as their author and not yet as AWriter.

I struggled through those six months following my resignation from the publishing world. Without my primary distraction, my purpose became obscured. I tried and failed to finish that book my publisher had been coaching me through. I seemed to both need and revile the mentoring. Further, should I ever finish it, the prospect of promoting that work seemed to drain me of all enthusiasm. I ultimately understood that I wanted to have written that work much more than I had ever desired to write it, a sure and certain sign of eventual failure. One can never really complete anything that is not really worth working on. The prospect of writing might need to be at least enlivening. AWriter cannot thrive half-heartedly.

I struggled through that Spring, coming to an understanding with myself. I'd been Exiled for seven years by then. I'd exhausted my interest in reentering my former profession and depleted myself, contributing to several good causes that ultimately were someone else’s. I ultimately decided to challenge myself by administering a rudimentary dedication test. I could choose to fail it at any time. The results would be mine alone. Nobody else ever needed to know whether or not I'd succeeded, but I'd know and might never successfully forget either way. Success could mean something. I had no real idea what, except it seemed that success might bring a sense of myself, an identity, or at least a functional stand-in for one.

I chose the first day of summer, the vaunted Solstice. On that morning, I would begin writing for the first time. Oh, as I mentioned above, I'd dabbled. I'd authored that minor best-seller and the Otter Summer Series when The GrandOtter was still visiting us. Still, I'd never approached writing's meaningless rituals and customs with any actual dedication. I promised myself that morning that I would begin and continue repeating those otherwise meaningless rituals and customs every morning into the unforeseeable future. I had no idea then where this pledge might lead me. This was the first real step I'd taken to return from being Exiled, toward taking charge of my existence again and not merely settling for the hand I'd been dealt in those earlier dissolutions. That morning, I became an AWriter by typing with my two-and-a-half typing fingers: Another Summer.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Exiled, #PureSchmaltz