One night in my tiny NYC apartment, a friend told me the story of his older brother's death. Feeling not only sympathy for my friend's loss but admiration for the power of his telling, I thought "He's a writer."
Later, when he showed me his poetry, published in Pakistan (his native land), I spoke the words I had thought. He responded, "No, if I thought of myself as a writer, I'd probably never write again."
A few years after this, my older daughter, age 15, wrote a novel. Although I was naturally proud of her and encouraged her to continue writing, she refused, saying that she had to be depressed to write.
Another friend told me she couldn't ever be a writer because she couldn't write dialogue.
Twenty-six years ago, I stumbled upon the subject that I wanted to write my novel about. Although I wrote fiction and poetry voluminously up to that point in my life and although I have since written hundreds of articles and published two books (both nonfiction), I have not written a word of fiction since that day in 1982.
I'd like to think of these reasons not to write as voyages we take in order to arrive at our writing. I think of them as the Odyssey: the 20-year journey Odysseus took in order to find his way back home and tell his story.
On the one hand, this is a truth I know deeply: that everything is really the journey to one's writing. On the other hand, I feel a terrible burden and sorrow about it. I would have liked to have lived life more freely, rather than bound permanently by an invisible umbilical cord to a ever-unborn manuscript.
I wonder if I'm a masochist or a habitual victim. Do I just like suffering? Couldn't I have found other ways to satisfy my need for accomplishment, fulfillment, or immortality? (Or maybe it's revenge? Revenge against those who'd like to suppress me, those who don't believe me, or against the heavens that laugh at my ambition?)
Immortality? Ambition? Yes ... although you will never see me compete with anyone. I will never take any honor out of the hands of another person, never diminish or try to steal another person's achievements or moment in the spotlight. I don't need to. I don't want what anybody else wants. Or perhaps I choose not to want what anyone else wants, so I can't lose anything. But, if that's my Fail-safe, it's not a very good one, because I have ended up feeling the need to achieve more than anyone else I know. I gave up wanting fame and fortune in this life and opted instead for posterity and eternity.
To some extent, this was not the way I planned things to go; it was what was dealt me. Writing is, for me, both a way to tell the truth and a way to fill a giant hole in my life. It's a way of being loved ... and the trouble is, the things that make most people feel appreciated, successful, or ... loved ... just don't do it for me.
Yet another barrier for me is that because so much was destroyed in my life, I became an expert at finding the way through dangerous forests and thus became a guide for others. There is no inner conflict for me: the trouble lies in others' expectations. Guides may never express sorrows about their own journeys. They can no longer tell their own stories.
But what better example is there but the doing itself?
