Anyhoo - I am editing this guys paper for a class at SU (and getting paid to do so waahooo!) and I enjoy multitasking while working so I was poking around at the internet and thought hey! I haven't read postsecret in AGES are people still doing that?? And lo and behold they are. I was of course shocked. I have two of that guys books but I'm kind of over it. Secrets on a postcard - it's been done, no? And really, there isn't much to say about that except when I saw this secret:
and I wanted to hurl.
Ok here is the best case scenario where I look like a jackass. Deserved = past tense so let's say this relationship didn't work out for said writer. Ok. Still pukey. Then let's say the other person died. Tragic. I like it. Pain makes good art. But what? You're going to spend an entire writing career writing about your failed (either tragically or normally) relationship over and over again? Vomit. Also - who just up and decides to become a writer. That burden is BESTOWED upon you, my friend. It's generally not really a choice. Even if you ignore it, the writing just kind of eeks out of you.
So yes. Bleck. Sappy crap. I knew there was a reason I stopped reading that site.
but wasn't that cheesy intention also jane austen's project when she wrote pride and prejudice? there are many novels, plays and works of poetry that reflect upon an author's intention of resolving reality through fiction.
ReplyDeleteand lots of gifted writers have up and decided to be writers after spending their lives being other things. for instance, isabel allende was a chilean engineer and worked for the UN before writing 'house of the spirits' which she is currently known for.
a good example of someone who up and decided to be a writer without the impetus of talent, however, is j.k. rowling. arguably, the harry potter series are far from literary masterpieces, and it is unlikely that a profound gift was bestowed upon ms. rowling, but she up and decided and did it. one may consider franz kafka, emily dickinson, shelley, rimbaud, etc. plenty of brilliant writers who were "bestowed" with the task of writing priceless literature but achieved no perceptible success in their lifetimes (and perhaps therein lies the absence of the price tag, the separateness from rowling's billionaire experience of writing) , but how does that diminish the capacity of one less tormented writer to "up and decide to"? a third grader could do the same, a cashier at k mart could do it, too. what ivory tower definition of talent determines who can write? it's possible that all of us ought to at some point, that each one of us has something worthy of communicating. any one thing. i mean, if danielle steele is a writer, then the guy at the hot dog stand is a writer too. he just doesn't have acrylic nails and a penchant for the fantasies of holed up housewives.
: )
Today's not so brief history of the novel brought to you by, anonymous.
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