Why We Write
I write because I’m fancy.No, really, I do—fanciness is something to be admired, exalted. Fancy writing is like yodeling in English, only everyone can identify the yodeler, and the yodeling is kept among three double-spaced pages. But don’t get me wrong: fanciness is not to be confused with gaudiness. Gaudiness is much more noticeable. Next time you take a flight longer than three hours, look over the seat in front of you. See that paperback your fellow traveler bought in the airport bookstore? That’s gaudy. Incidentally, it’s also a waste of six dollars.
It’s hard to describe the writing-feeling. For me, it’s kleptomaniacal: I write for fear that I’ll forget my ideas. For some, it’s compulsory: I know students who dread the act of writing, and who’ll only write what is absolutely necessary. For others, it’s reflective; author Joan Didion seems to fall into this category. In her short work titled Why I Write, she explains that she writes “to find out what [she’s] thinking, what [she’s] looking at, what [she sees] and what it means” (3).
But, if we write for different reasons, why are we all called writers? What makes us all part of this group? Didion claims that a writer is “a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper,” but this isn’t right—by Didion, some of my best writer-friends aren’t writers, but merely people who exploit the English language in an essay to get an easy A (2). Writers don’t have to be people who spend hours upon hours writing; writers aren’t nearly as special as Didion thinks so. We’re all writers, no matter what we do, and there’s no escaping it.
Flight of the Reader (and Writer)
There’s something happening to writing. In fact, it’s a change that’s rippling through the writing and reading communities simultaneously. The thing is, nobody realizes that it’s the same change, and it’s happening all at once.The reader-writer relationship is changing, and Billy Collins offers a peek into how with his poem “Flight of the Reader.” In the poem, the speaker exposes something tender about the relationship between writers and readers: the relationship is not as unidirectional as Didion likes to think. The speaker in Collins’ poem frankly addresses his readers, playfully acknowledging them for their dedication and solemnly ruing the day “[he] wakes up to find [them] gone” (line 19). Sentimentally, Collins reveals a previously-ignored truism: without readers, there would be no writers. The relationship is not unidirectional. Perhaps without realizing it, readers support the livelihood of their beloved writers, and writers are only now beginning to understand that symbiosis.
Contemporary literature is to blame for making this relationship obvious. With the advent of publishing on the Internet, writers are not only reaching new readers, but they’re finding that new readers can reach them. In an evolution unparalleled in English literature history, writers are now closer to their readers—in the sense that they can respond to their readers’ comments, opinions, and misunderstandings. With this, a new perception of readership is emerging.
It’s becoming apparent that no two readers understand a text in the same way. I don’t mean in reference to their technical, grammatical understanding—I mean that readers bring their own habits, histories, emotions, and individual reading environments into their perception of a text. (Thanks to new technologies, the ability to read in a multitude of places is influencing this realization.) Readers, in a sense, are writers in their own minds; altering the text as they see it—a product of their own consciousness. As the boundary between writers and readers breaks down, writers are no longer bourgeois, and readers are no longer drones.
A Redefinition of Great Writing
Great writers are great readers. Proof that this exists lies in Ron Koertge’s poem titled “Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?” In it, Koertge calls for writers to “go out into the world:” experience it as a reader does, and then write (line 2).The best writers are great listeners. They set themselves on the pulse of a society’s population. To do that, they must read. But not just read in the typical sense, but read in the abstract: they must read expressions, read reactions, read responses. They must read history, news, and new technological developments. Because readers define a writer’s career, writers must write about what will be read, and to do that, writers must be readers.
Are You a Writer?
We’re all writers, and we have no choice but to be writers. Writers are creators; writers write on varied canvases. When we use our senses, we’re writing in the pages of our minds. When we read, we transcribe the thoughts of others into our own writings, adapting and refashioning them into new works. As the definition of writing and reading evolves, it reflects a new concept of writing and reading—as something more interrelated than ever before.