Writing as Love

Writing is an act of love.

I won't attempt a pithy definition for that last word. Willing good to another for the other's sake is a solid Thomistic start, but too colorless at first glance. It's possible to hold that phrase in your mind and still say love with a coo. Whatever else it may be, love is about something—this red-haired woman, this long-haired Deity, this apple tree, or city, or space opera, or liturgy, or amazing text editor. I see that St. Thomas is already making excited gestures as I mangle our one English word into a mash of everything from caritas to delectatio, but all these loves do share this trait of gazing at the beloved, not the lover.

Writing is about the beloved. Writing is not about the writer. This sounds obvious, but unfortunately the act of writing often involves long hours of being the only live creature in sight. You can be exalted and tormented by visions, or you can keep getting up for a drink and imagining the face of that particular relative upon confronting your first published book. The tug towards narcissism is tremendous.

Art is always this double-edged sword; it can slice through the everyday thicket and let in the stars, or it can turn inward and be—sharp. But the sword is particularly unwieldy today. First, and worst, we live in a Culture of Narcissism (which also happens to be an excellent book by Christopher Lasch). The whole weight of society, from our commercials to our cul-de-sacs, constantly shoves our faces into a swamp of self-obsession.

Second, we writers seem to cultivate our own virulent strain of the disease. We are trained from childhood to clutch each batch of words as mine—my story, my song, my idea. Soon we scrutinize our works for the slightest traces of unoriginality; even the tiniest infection of someone else's thought will nullify our legal title to full ownership. Each brief sunburst of actually thinking about our topic quickly collapses into worrisome gloom; is this wordchain good enough yet? Am I?

If we follow this perilous craft into adulthood, we find that the advice to be utterly original is further coupled with and write exactly what your editor thinks her advertisers think her readers want to hear. Personally, I find this tricky. I've always been a big fan of the Principle of Non-Contradiction, and I don't like to see it made game of in public.

Not that it's my business to whine over what's being published these days; yes, brethren, let us grieve over Reader's Digest, but we can also rejoice over the many confirmations of Ray Bradbury's thought that an excellent story can be published in any magazine. My ire is more with our advisors, the wise wordsmiths who can't go to sleep at night if they haven't written about the Business Side of Writing at least eighteen times.

Why? Because writing ought to be an act of love. Now, love and writing in the same sentence almost always mean loving the act of writing. I just love writing! It's my passion! My compulsion! If I don't write, my intestines work themselves into barbed wire and I break out in hives the size of kumquats! These are valid enthusiasms, but they obfuscate the nature of the craft. Writers communicate. If I'm going to do this for the rest of my life, it has to be for a better reason than to keep my liver from turning into string cheese.

In one sense, sure, I write for myself; even now, I'm struggling and failing to articulate the whirlwind that came last night as I thought in bed. And I'm partly writing for selfish reasons, too: to have a new blog on this magic mirror, to prove to myself I can still write, to impress a couple people I'm pretty sure will read this, and so on. But I am also writing for love. I have something I want to show you. I want to make you happy.

It doesn't matter whether I knew you before. At the moment you read this, we connect. There. Here we are.

Perhaps writing is simply talking, with words that stay (as they say in Dark Crystal). I miss those Victorians calling me dear reader. We're not allowed to do that any more, dear reader, but I liked these bursts of affection. It was a clarifying phrase; unlike much of Victoriana, it illumined the reality in question. Who else is the author talking to? Dear critic? Writing is telling you about something, right now, so you can see it too.

And there is a whole world to write about. It's that world, not the ways of talking about it, that's got to be the whole point. My image of writing is still a grizzled old genius by a typewriter; it ought to be the Burning Bush, or a chickadee, or Helen of Troy, or the ocean in fury, or anything besides a living room with a bestseller on the table. Writing is a window, but let's open it, or I'll start staring at my own pale reflection. Let's open the window and climb outside.