In the immortal words of Soren Kierkegaard, “God laid this shite before me and thus I must embrace it…” or something to that effect, and that got me thinking about my own personal path through life. Lately it seems as though the entire universe has been conspiring against me, and that tells me, if I am to believe Mr. K, that *I* am doing something to make that happen. So…
No more running in fear. No more hiding.
Play the hand you are dealt and play it well.
One man’s failure is another man’s tiding,
yet both are bound by the toll the a bell.
The measure of a man’s death is how he lived his life, and since death is a life’s ultimate action, the way we live weighs heavily against this event and your memory. And that brings me to my own life… am I living it mightily or do I sit waiting for the box. Some days one, some days the other, and the writing is what tips the balance. They say, “A writer writes…” and I have oft lambasted myself for not being a writer, because I don’t write (or at least I didn’t). I tell stories, I witness events and recount tales, but mostly it all swirls within my skull, interminably pondered, polished, adjusted, and rarely does it get committed to the page. I was able to let myself off the hook a bit when I realized that I was actually writing, and that a great part of writing is experiencing life, researching, wondering, and fantasizing, which is exactly what I was doing.
Now, finally released from my self-perceived inadequacy, I have come to see myself as a writer, and I DO write. All the time. Every day. This got me thinking about the nature of writing, be it fiction, technical, dissertative (not actually a word, but should be…), or frivolous, and this is what I have come to. My own personal Writer’s Credo, if you will:
word - n. A dagger, a lover's whisper, a cleansing flame, a silk kerchief, flitting through the mind, tripping off the tongue, or committed to the page.
Every word has a place on the page in the tale. Each must be chosen for its accuracy, intensity, and absolute conveyance of meaning. They must burst from the your heart like the sobs of one who has loved deeply and lost. Let them trip off the tongue without contrivance or contrition as poetry. Commit to your speech, and make it yours. No one talks that way? They do if you do, but you must buy your own sales-pitch. You must believe in what you say and how you choose to state it. Find a single word where other use three. And above all, do not fear eloquence, for if a word is worth committing to the page, then it deserves every chance at eloquence that its scribe can afford it.
