I'm No Margaret Mitchell

Main Entry: writ·er
Pronunciation: 'rI-t&r
Function: noun
: one that writes

 

Am I the only writer in journal land who does not want to publish a novel? Lately, I’ve taken pains to look at everything I read—magazine articles, blogs, online news snippets, newspaper reports, editorials, non-fiction, even ads—from the critical point of view of another writer. Much as I have always been a writer, I have never done that before. Maybe I’ve never thought of myself as a "writer" before. But I certainly fit the above definition.

In the minds of many, the terms "writer" and "novelist" seem synonymous. The ultimate work of fiction is the designated carrot dangling just beyond the reach of every scribe. The lifetime achievement. The Holy Grail. Fiction writers believe they have a monopoly on the creative aspects of writing. They promote writing as art, with the insinuation that if writers are artists, their masterpieces will be works of glorious, imaginative, flowery prose. Where does that leave the rest of us?

I have no desire to ever write a novel. Does that make me not quite a writer? I have nothing against "creative writing." I love poetry. I use it as my outlet for the purely artistic side of my writer self. But I never had any patience for all the literary machinations that go into writing fiction. I truly believe that one of the reasons I never went to college was that I was afraid I would be subjected to too many classes that consisted of having a gun put to my head to read all the most boring epics in the history of humanity, and then participating in the excruciating process of dissecting every bit of meaning, real or imagined, from these narcotic stories. Faulkner? Snore…Single sentences that filled entire pages. Dickens? He was paid by the word, for God’s sake. Tolstoy? Please! War and Peace?

Now I’ve gone and revealed one of my deepest secrets: I have no literary class. A deadly admission for a writer. I read fiction. But I read it for the stories. For the pure escapism of it. For its ability to immerse me in a persona, place and time that are not me, here, now. Any attempts at formulaic "Meaning of Life" symbolism generally go right over my head. I religiously avoid novels that contrive to teach me something. I really don’t want to have to think that hard about the fiction I read.

Why am I ranting about this? I don’t know. In my wanderings around journal land lately, I have noticed this almost sycophantic reverence for "published" writers. This gets under my skin, for some reason. It must be that little competitive gremlin that resides in me, who pops her head out and snarls from time to time, when I think someone is making a show of being better at something than I am. I’ve visited some of the blogs of our hallowed published writers, and it always seems to me that, as such, they are just a teensy bit smug; and somewhat pedantic in the way they relate to the rest of us. I suppose I just want to be comfortable being an unpublished writer, and I resent those that, by their very presence, suggest that isn’t good enough. I’m sure there are all kinds of convoluted psychological explanations for this. But I won’t bore you with any of my self-psychoanalysis. You’ll find that in my other journal… J