She reads work by writers like Kurt Vonnegut, Virginia Woolf, J.D. Salinger, and Saeed Jones. She reads their work and wonders how they can create such beautiful essences and ideas. How they can know so much and find the right words to express themselves. She likes to have her journal sitting around because she’ll document some things that these authors have written. Because they make her cry sometimes and grapple with humanity, and because they make her want to observe and grapple with humanity more. And then she observes and sees and hears and feels these incredible things that spin her perspective in every direction. She writes because she wants to document the spinning. Every centimeter that she spins seems important.
She had “silent reading” in her elementary school, and it was a glorious break for her. Reading time was right before recess, and one day in the fourth grade she got so into Heidi that she didn’t hear the bell ring. She just got pulled in, felt like she was walking in the Swiss countryside. About half way through recess, she came to and realized that she was the only student in the room. She asked her teacher what happened, and he said that everyone went outside but he hadn’t wanted to disturb her. Almost eleven years later, she remembers this. And she wants her readers to feel the same pull into the pages that carves a memory. She wants them to discover and cradle their emotions, challenge their original opinions, make them think. Whatever she can get. She hopes to cause a spinning like what she experiences. It’s a game but it’s also very serious.
And then there is the pleasure in making. When she sits down to write, it’s almost always because she’s experienced something that tugged at some nerves, caused some synapses to fire more quickly and her arteries and veins to throb. To use one of George Orwell’s categories, she’s an aesthetic writer in many ways. Besides being constantly moved by small observations, this means that she likes the words themselves. That’s one of the reasons that she likes poetry so much- a big part of the form is structure and word order. Finding the right syntax is so fulfilling for her, even if she only flipped the order of two words or added a coma. It makes her feel like she’s respected the words to her utmost ability. This is a lovely thing.
When she was younger, she used to sit in front of a dinosaur of a computer (old, huge, slow) and type in Microsoft Word 2003. And she always used Bradley Hand font, which she now sees as an aesthetically disastrous choice. She doesn’t think that her family even had Internet on that thing, so all she could do was type stories and save them in a folder on the Desktop. Sometimes she’d print them out and hand them to her single reader: her mom. And she’d wait around while her mom read to watch her face. She’s sure that her mom has some of them sitting in labelled boxes in their attic, and maybe one day she’ll venture up there and read some of her earliest work. And probably laugh at its simplicity. Things get more complicated and tangled the more that she writes. And so she keeps writing.
I have a confession: the “she” I've been referring to is me. The thing is, I don’t like to write with “I” because it makes me feel egotistical. Sure, I like to talk about myself just like everyone else. But I write because I want to learn about things outside of myself, and then I read my writing and realize that it's all about me. Me, me, me. Which is utterly frustrating.
I think that this occurs because of one hard-to-admit truth: I also write and read for myself. When I write, I will always be expressing myself. Unless you are deep into Buddhism, you cannot rise above The Self– you cannot separate. And inevitably, you wind up on the page. Which is a weird thing when you’re trying to grapple with ego.
When I look for things to read, I try to find work with which I will not relate. But I nevertheless wind up connecting with something in the text. This happens without fail. To offer a theory about this course of events, let’s jump on the meta train. I suppose this constant ability to relate comes from the writers’ adeptness at capturing humanity at an essence which runs deep within us all. While I read things that I do not– at first glance– relate to, I can always find something which resonates, so I often come away from the literature knowing more about myself than before.
I want people to read my work and feel the same way. If they find even one sentence which they can use to grow, then I have achieved my goal. This isn’t because I want to feel power or go down in history. I simply want to give readers something to take away from my writing. I want to cause spinning like what I have felt because I want to give back somehow. I want to give back to the literary community from which I have (gratefully) taken.
Then there is grappling with the fear to write. Here, this does not refer to the fear of ego, but to the fear of failure. If I produce something from which readers cannot take something away, then I have failed. And to fail at this is to fail at human relationship and interaction. Perhaps some find this statement overdramatic. But somehow, this is a rational concept in my brain, and it freezes me on the page. I need to be good at empathizing. I need to be good at observing. I need to be good at creating and sharing. If not, then I don’t properly understand humanity. Which isn’t to say that I’m hopeless– just that I have a lot of maturing to do. So, on top of all of the above conclusions, I suppose that part of why I write is to build myself a space in which I can continue growing.