No. You’d think I’d
mean this, wouldn’t you, but I don’t. Four of my friends have grabbed
themselves a Wordpress or something equivalent in the past month because they
want to be writers. They start Facebook pages, too, to go with the Wordpresses
or the Bloggers or the I don’t know what young people are calling them these
days. Encourage “likes.” Because that’s what you do if you want to be a writer.
You start a blog.
Already being a
writer is out of the question. You are not one, it seems—no matter how much
writing you do—if you don’t have an audience. More specifically, an audience
made of people who do not necessarily know you. Who do not start out knowing
you. They know you through your work. Or they will. Or they would, if it was me
and this was a blog.
It’s not, you know.
The point—See, the point is to share it. “Hey, look over here.” That was what
this was going to be, at the beginning. They’re very clever, my friends. Good
with words. Sincere. I could be clever, maybe. That was the plan. It failed,
but still— Social media. Word of mouth. The link up there still works; I can
post it places even if I’m not actually being clever anymore and just…
I can’t do it,
though. This isn’t a fucking blog. I had—Oh, I had the wrong idea and I can’t
twist my thoughts into the right shapes, I guess, because every single one of
these posts is a letter to someone no matter how they start out, and what if a
Someone should find me out? Find themselves? Catch me saying what I mean?
Sometimes I can’t say
things when I want to. Make that all the time.
This is not a letter,
but also it is.
I am not not-a-writer
because I don’t have a fucking audience. I am not a writer for other reasons.
Does writing for yourself make you a writer? I don’t know. I don’t write for
myself; I write letters. It’s all I’ve ever done. What we have here is a
failure to communicate. You see, I can’t speak.
Maybe I should start
a blog, but what would I write there if I can’t abide the thought of an opened
envelope? Of truth? Of someone else’s eyes? Maybe I should forget the whole
thing. Of course, I’ve said that before.
Dear Rachel,
ReplyDeleteHere is an unlettered letter to your lettered un-letter--
About a year ago I wrote a story where a character's words were in dialogue tags. The character was a dress, and one of my friends told me he could believe that he could believe a dress could think and feel--but not that it could speak. For me, the question was more whether the dress was, in fact, speaking if nobody heard it?
It's an open question to me. So is: is communicating with words using a page of paper or web the same as communicating with words using air?
And if it is or isn't--what does that mean about the way our listeners, or audiences, will or can hear us?
I think many of us who are unrecognized writers--those of us who, for whatever reason--feel like we're not being heard when we speak with letters--struggle mightily with this. And I think this struggle can be--in itself--a source of power as mighty as it is. It's certainly fueled a very potent post here. It's a strong heartbeat in the bodies of works by many writers I know. And I think it can be seen in the creations of many writers who have become prominent figures--I think sometimes, this struggle is even the source of their prominence--
"I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!" *~*~Emily Dickinson
Love,
Clotho