11-2 The Writer's Perspective

Stories come to us as wraiths requiring precise embodiments. Running seems to allow me, ideally, an expanded consciousness in which I can envision what I'm writing as a film or a dream. I rarely invent at the typewriter but recall what I've experienced. I don't use a word processor but write in longhand, at considerable length. (Again, I know: writers are crazy.)  - Joyce Carol Oates

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to write, had the urge and desire to create works that would convey depth, emotion and experience to the reader, to make them think, feel and react.  It has been something I have worked at for a long time, with small bursts of success here and there, most often in terms of my professional life, where my ability to turn a phrase or summarize a technically complicated idea into a concise and salient point will be met with a “good job” by a co-worker or supervisor.  When it comes to my personal writing, however, I have been lax as of late.  While I have participated in National Novel Writing Month (an exercise that challenges one to write 50,000 words in 30 days during the month of November) for the last five years and “won” (completed the challenge) four of those years, I have failed to keep up with the momentum that the daily practice affords me, and reading through the process as described by Joyce Carol Oates in “To Invigorate Literary Mind, Start Moving Literary Feet”, was a refreshing and completely identifiable description of the task of writing and the necessarily solitary practice it is. 

Oates, one of America’s most prolific and varied writers, is a master of the written word.  Even the article is poetry on the page, and pulls the reader in to the scene she sets as she compares the practice of running to the practice of writing.  Her descriptions of the “mindlessness” of running, of how it is in and of itself a meditative act that affords her the opportunity to lose herself in thought, is one that I believe many writers would agree with, because it is often within the mundane tasks of day to day life that the little bursts of inspiration can materialize and demand attention be paid.  It is often when one’s mind is engaged in something that is so automatic that the freedom to create, to imagine worlds and characters, can rise up. 

As I have progressed in this course and reflected more and more on the use of social media by writers and readers, it appears that while the process Oates details still remains solitary and meditative, the ways in which those works are consumed, interpreted and disseminated has changed.  Between Facebook, Twitter and blogs, as well as other platforms, writers have a myriad of ways to market themselves and their work, a task traditionally handled by publishing companies.  As the world of self-publishing has boomed, writers who are truly motivated to get their works in as many hands as possible are driven to get their names and works out among the worldwide audience available to them via the Internet, and the possibilities are almost limitless.  A quick review of the books listed on the Amazon Kindle application bears this out, as many writers have chosen to forego the traditional publishing route and utilize services provided by on-demand publishers such as Amazon Kindle Direct, Lulu, etc.  Just as the internet has given power to the reading audience to comment and determine which entertainment products might be successful, so to have these new tools available to writers allowed them to market their books directly to audiences that might have an inherent interest in their works.  Through my own presence within vegan groups on social media, I have discovered many cookbook and animal rights authors that I might not have otherwise known about any other way, because these authors make themselves open and available via social media as a way to connect with their target audience.   

Reference:

Oates, J.  (1999, July 18).  To invigorate literary mind, start moving literary feet.  The New York Times.  Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/071999oates-writing.html