Being a Writer
Apr. 17th, 2014 11:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljwrites posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
write_awayDo you find that having a writer's temperament or talent affects your life in other areas, for better or for worse? Here are the ways it's affected me:
- My only real economic value is as a writer. In my day job I keep falling into translation work. It's something I couldn't do if I weren't bilingual, of course, but that's just the bare minimum requirement. I make money with translation because constructing phrases and getting ideas across clearly is what I'm good at, really all I've ever been good at.
- Even when I'm not writing things down I keep exercising the same muscles. I teach subjects that have nothing to do with writing, but my most effective teaching comes from my creative sensibilities, not whatever knowledge I might have. I synthesize, adjust, and add nuance; I use Jon Stewart and V for Vendetta to teach international law concepts because I see the connections, the same way I do when I write.
- I use words as a weapon and a shield, sometimes in terrible wounding ways. I have inadvertently hurt relationships and feelings because of this, usually because I was right in but hurtful ways. It's something I'm working on, because having insight and the words to express it is no excuse to harm people.
- I love words despite their destructive potential (or maybe because of it). I pore over them and chew them over in my mouth. When someone is struggling with a word to use I'm almost always the person to supply them, and they're almost always the right words. This also means I am an inveterate interrupter, something else I am trying to change.
- In the end, I have never had any other ambitions. Looking back, I rather naively got a law degree because I was told I could get the financial security and time to be a writer that way. The results were mixed. I was largely a zombie through higher education--the only times I showed the professional hustle and passion my parents so wanted for me was when I was working on writing projects.
- Even while trying hard not to be a writer, I was writing anyway. I wrote on the backs of used paper, in notebooks that my mother would throw away, on a computer once I learned to use one. I wrote fanfic when I got an internet connection. As I moved up the education ladder and became increasingly confused about where I was going, the times when I wrote were some of the few hours of my day that felt real.
It's not always easy to like this part of myself. I still have a suspicion of artistic types as shifty and untrustworthy, no doubt through the lens of parental disapproval. Surrendering to this strange possession was like relaxing for the first time in my life. I still do my day job, and try to be productive in my stunted way, but I'm better aware of how this writing disease stretches its tentacles into every corner of my life. I've also come to acknowledge that the pages of my own creation are where I truly live, whether I like it or not.
- My only real economic value is as a writer. In my day job I keep falling into translation work. It's something I couldn't do if I weren't bilingual, of course, but that's just the bare minimum requirement. I make money with translation because constructing phrases and getting ideas across clearly is what I'm good at, really all I've ever been good at.
- Even when I'm not writing things down I keep exercising the same muscles. I teach subjects that have nothing to do with writing, but my most effective teaching comes from my creative sensibilities, not whatever knowledge I might have. I synthesize, adjust, and add nuance; I use Jon Stewart and V for Vendetta to teach international law concepts because I see the connections, the same way I do when I write.
- I use words as a weapon and a shield, sometimes in terrible wounding ways. I have inadvertently hurt relationships and feelings because of this, usually because I was right in but hurtful ways. It's something I'm working on, because having insight and the words to express it is no excuse to harm people.
- I love words despite their destructive potential (or maybe because of it). I pore over them and chew them over in my mouth. When someone is struggling with a word to use I'm almost always the person to supply them, and they're almost always the right words. This also means I am an inveterate interrupter, something else I am trying to change.
- In the end, I have never had any other ambitions. Looking back, I rather naively got a law degree because I was told I could get the financial security and time to be a writer that way. The results were mixed. I was largely a zombie through higher education--the only times I showed the professional hustle and passion my parents so wanted for me was when I was working on writing projects.
- Even while trying hard not to be a writer, I was writing anyway. I wrote on the backs of used paper, in notebooks that my mother would throw away, on a computer once I learned to use one. I wrote fanfic when I got an internet connection. As I moved up the education ladder and became increasingly confused about where I was going, the times when I wrote were some of the few hours of my day that felt real.
It's not always easy to like this part of myself. I still have a suspicion of artistic types as shifty and untrustworthy, no doubt through the lens of parental disapproval. Surrendering to this strange possession was like relaxing for the first time in my life. I still do my day job, and try to be productive in my stunted way, but I'm better aware of how this writing disease stretches its tentacles into every corner of my life. I've also come to acknowledge that the pages of my own creation are where I truly live, whether I like it or not.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-17 07:24 pm (UTC)But stories are just as important to me as the words that build them. I'm constantly daydreaming about fictional people and cannibalizing bits and pieces from other media to come up with new stories. When I was at school, all my classes were potential story fodder. Anthropology gave me ideas for different kinds of fantasy societies and philosophy gave me interesting conflicts for characters to deal with.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-18 06:07 am (UTC)"If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write."
- Somerset Maugham
But of course, words are necessary in most cases to tell a story, give a clear image of a character, get incidents across and so on. So the division isn't clear-cut, but overall I would agree with Maugham it's a good idea to put words in the service of story and not treat them as ends in themselves.
"semantic whore"
Haha, better than "grammar Nazi," I guess?
I get all sorts of material from reading and classes, too. Politics are particularly fertile grounds for me, because I love the many levels of conflict, internal, interpersonal, and social, generated by a political clash. And increasingly I'm interested in the cultural context characters come from, all the more because the more people's differences are illuminated the more sharply universal themes come into view.