REYNEE DEYS AND REYNEE NEHYTS

and little dogs named Feydeaux.

I was reading the blog over at A M HARTE, where Anna was describing a party bore who was so sure of his artistic moral superiority, he felt he could safely criticize her work without ever having seen it.

As I understand it, he crafted his art from sweat and blood; on parchment of living scrotum stretched over fretful porcupines; using a fresh dodo quill for each new preposition, and all that only on the first wet day after solstice in Yobhel. Something like that.

I’ve certainly read text which might have been written by a man in such extremis. Someone perhaps who’d lost sight of their place in the space time continuum – I suffered for my art and now it’s your turn…. But he might have been an artist of truly rare talent.

James Joyce struggled for years with each of his novels, and succeeded in winning – eventually – garlands of praise from the literati, even as his successive works became perhaps less accessible to the average reader. Leonardo rarely ever finished a painting; Mona Lisa has had a dozen incarnations, layers of vision reconsidered; while Vincent painted a masterpiece every day, too full of colour and movement and the need to capture and express the world around him to agonize over the shadows in hair or the light in air. All brilliant. All a little mad.

I used to think all artists were dealing with mental illness of some sort. Then I realized all people were dealing with mental illness of some sort, only artists choose to channel their pain and their revelation and their joy into art. So maybe Anna’s bore was a great artist who, sadly, had an asshole where his id should be.

Why people write seems to be fundamentally tied to what they write and how they write it.

Some people have a clear vision of who they are and what they want to say, and even how and when they want to say it. Organized souls can commit to a set period each day, a set word count, a codified set of interim goals and an overall outcomes-based protocol structure. For many, that works.

Some people are drifters. They drift from painting, to gardening, to cooking, to furniture restoration and woodwork, to jewelry making or dressmaking. They have to create, but don’t have a sense of order governing their time management. They maybe feckless, or they may, when the spirit takes them, be absolutely obsessive. No food, no sleep, let the peonies wither.

Some authors use their art as therapy. Dramas and old traumas, love and death and sex, can get so tangled up in their words that their most brilliant expressions begin to tarnish under the weight of angst. I ache therefore I am. Others have poor boundaries, overly anxious to share their deepest selves. Look at me. LOOK AT ME, this is my soul. Others still, will hide, burn or delete a huge part of their creation out of shame or humiliation or feelings of inadequacy.

Some of us have consciences that are pure stand over merchants, which make us steadfast, stout and self-disciplined. Some of us need external deadlines approaching like swarming killer bees to shake us out of the long, cool afternoons of ‘she’ll be right….’ or G&T mañanas.

As a student I had a dear friend who was an artist. She painted. Constantly. She owned no article of clothing that didn’t have paint blotches or turps; every cent she had went on canvas or brushes or paint. Ideas flowed out of her like a river of life. But we were poor students so she sold work. No one thought her a whore for producing what would sell – it was essential cause and effect, supply and demand, produce and consume. There was no danger the well of her art would dry up or rust from exposure to commercial art. She had talent, she had skill, she knew her craft, she studied the processes; what she needed was filthy lucre.

And then there is what we write. If you write shorts, or poems, or contemporary general fiction, your blank page can be filled with meaningful characters in neat lines with no more preparation than taking a seat with a cuppa at the side.

If you write historical, or high fantasy (where there is an established pseudo-reality), or non-fiction, or science-fiction, there may be weeks or months of reading and note taking, cross referencing and jotting and more and more and more reading before you can put any more than sketches on a page. And chances are the first one hundred sketches you create for a story will be erased before the actual text begins to appear. Essential time and effort that cannot be measured or justified in word counts or deadlines met.

And how you write. Some are plotters who can catalogue out an entire card system which builds into complex plotting and character interactions. Some, like Stephen King, come upon a story like a chimney sticking out of the sand. You know what style of house it is, and generally where its pieces fit, but you dig away the dross and you don’t know the final detail until it is completely uncovered.

And who you write for. Some people write for their writing group. It’s chardy in the beer garden first Wednesday of each month, with a tight smile critique of each other’s work and the smug satisfaction of a job better done than theirs, and the grunt of delicious agony in the artist unappreciated. 

Some write for Squees – and THAT my friend is the way to make cash. Kiddie conflict and otherworldly romances. Some write for a set audience – another well proven route to fiscal reward. Some write for themselves, and do not even know for sure, or care greatly, if anyone else ever sees their words. Writing them makes the invisible real in the same way as slicing an arm. 

Who cares, in the end? Who, why, where, when, how or what is not important. It won’t work as a gauge of skill. Even complete assholes with Sunday arty-farty pretentions can write beautiful words. Determined professionals can write crap.

Surely what works, works. Do it. If it doesn’t work, leave it out. Life is short and full of shit. Better to get on with the journey you want to make, than to sit in the mud wishing the world worked differently. Tell your story, it is important.

I recently saw John Bell speak on the power of storytelling; from the democratic nature of Shakespeare, to the Grimm respect for children’s right to the truth in classical fairytales. He said, if we were ever to doubt the power of the story, who ever told it, we should think of a room full of noisy, hyped up, in your face ankle biters, whose rabble roar blanketed the stage - until the moment the lights went down, and the narrator began to whisper. 

And you could have heard a pin drop.

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