Almost a week ago I finished Kate Douglas Wiggin's young adult novel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I started it in need of a distraction from pregnancy, continued listening to it in labor, and finished it nursing. Quite the saga. Little Rebecca's personality, desires, subtle love interests, and progress reminded me of L.M. Montgomery's Emily trio--even though it was published about 15 years earlier. I admit--I like Emily better: less sappy, anticipated, with a tad more reality. But I recognize that they fit the same category of silly, dreamy girl-fiction. Sometimes I need that. Better than crap fiction.
Both Emily and Rebecca are poets. Poetesses, if you will. I started out that way. In fact, I came to college convinced that I would be scribbling poetry and changing the world like Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams (just to name a few--back to the silly dreamy girl-fiction separated from reality...). I even briefly switched my major to English linguistics so that I could better appreciate language. Then I decided that *gasp and good grief!* I couldn't write good poetry. I couldn't write good fiction. What then? And now I'm wondering if I can write good essays. Isn't there a line where the hopeful young writer must evaluate herself and say, "Nice try. Keep it as a hobby?" Alas; I am too stubborn to give up. I am too determined to "succeed" (whatever that means in the popular or academic literary worlds) to be satisfied with a hobby. And yes, I've even labled myself. I am a writer. But of what? This is a question that still baffles me. In my idealistic dream existance I want to be able to master every genre at least once in my life (yes! That includes a musical. How in the heck will I pull that off?) In my reality I just want to write every day and find something that slightly satisfies me enough to edit by the end of the week. I believe writers change the world, but I'm not going about to do that anymore. The ones who actually make an influence on their readers do not harbor such proud ambitions.
I want to write for Wesley.
I want to write for Levi.
I want to write out of love and hope.
I want to write well.
I want to write because, frankly, I can't not write which sounds extremely trite but is true.
And in the end, I just want to write.
Anyone with aspirations (a word close enough to "respiration" that it includes everyone) hits a point of wonderment/discouragement and asks if what he or she is doing is actually worth while. I guess I'm here to say that it is, it is, whatever it is.
Be a writer of words and ideas. Let them fall in whatever boxes the box people want to put them in. You are not a box person, you are a writer. This sounds simplistic, I'm sure, but really.
ReplyDeleteBox people are those among us who cannot write, so we have to concern ourselves with putting writing into boxes.
Just write.