... I find something admirable in Don Quixote ...
March 28, 1999
5:22 p.m.
God plays cruel games. Or maybe a better way of saying it is that sometimes, life just sucks. Seeing Linda's discussion on being "average" has gotten me to thinking. Just what the heck is an "average" writer? This is a scary path. It's a thought that will push us down into oblivion if we let it. I am an average person. I have an average life, with an average job and an average point of view. At least that's how I think of myself most of the time. But it's not true. It's not true for me, and it's not true for Linda, and it's not true for you, either. There is no such thing as an average writer. Let us fight this together. The term is a mathematical figment, a playtoy of statisticians, and as such has no meaning in a world without numbers. I don't know what Linda was thinking as she wrote her piece, and I don't want to put her through the wringer here. She's not wrong, per se. But I'm guessing she was tired, that she was haggard from hours of dealing with network issues and with her husband or her children. I'm guessing a story had her tied around its little finger and wouldn't let her go. I'm guessing she was feeling insignificant. In other words, I'm guessing life sucked at that precise moment. But the term "average" does not apply to what Linda writes. Just read "Merdinus," the story she wrote with Mike Resnick, then read her story that appeared in Analog. Then read the piece she wrote on why she writes. Not a damned thing average about any of them. Each are extraordinary pieces of work. They are unique, each very different in prose style, and in mechanics. Each very different in message and delivery. The story I recently sold to Artemis in collaboration with her is, again, different. The only thing similar about them is that each piece has a message. Each has a piece of their writer embedded inside. Of course, you can't measure this. The inner workings of our minds, and the way our feelings interact with the world around us is what makes each of us unique. It's what keeps our writing from ever being "average." You can give me and everyone else I know an IQ rating, then average all those together. But then try to predict how I'll answer an essay question on the value of self-worth, okay? While you're at it, try telling me I'm wrong when I'm done--or that my opinion is "average." Yeah, I'm waxing way too extravagantly--maybe. The problem, the trap as it were, is really quite simple. It's the pressure we put on ourselves to be commercial. And it's the feeling that I have to pull shit out of thin air because my inner self is not going to be interesting enough to anyone else. I'm terrible about this. I lose energy on a piece as soon as I start to think "It'll never sell." Or I tell myself that no one wants to read what I have to say because I'm just an mid-westerner who doesn't know much. Next thing you know, all my excitement around the piece I'm working on is gone. And the piece never sells, and I start thinking about self-fulfilling prophesies and all that other malarkey we keep putting ourselves through.. Perversely, of course, if I sit down to write about something or someone that interests me, I end up writing material that sells. Some of those pieces are silly. Some are sappy. Some are dramatic. Some are over-written. Some are done in such clean language as to make my presence seem almost not there. Heck, a couple of them might even be good. None of them are average, though. And it's always the message, that piece of myself that I let free, that makes those special. It's the words I choose to put on the page and maybe even more importantly, the words I chose to leave off. It's the point I embed in those words. This is the ultimate game of "Chicken," you know. If I sit down to write, telling myself I'm going to write something that sells, then what comes out is stilted. When I do this it's like I'm Don Quixote bouncing off a windmill. I see that car coming toward me that has "NOT COMMERCIAL" spray-painted on the windshield, and I turn away to the emergency lane. I'm still not average at these times. Instead, I'm worse. I'm boring, and maybe even a little pathetic. Don Quixote, of course, made an ass of himself sometimes. Sometimes, even when I put my heart and soul into a tale, it's still crap. Hey, it happens, you know? Babe Ruth went down swinging more times than anyone else of his time, too. But Don Quixote made an impression on his Dolcenea because he put his soul into his actions. If I ignore that car racing toward me, if I write within my interests, with my inner self somewhere deep inside the words, then I am Don Quixote because I am guaranteed to touch a few Dolceneas and change their perspectives along the way. And sometimes, sometimes when it all happens just right, one of those Dolceneas is myself, and I find that something I've done in my subconscious reaches up and changes the way I view something. Only then do I realize that the car with the spray-paint was just a hallucination. A cruel hoax played by God or whatever powers that be to see how much I trusted myself. So, my point today is to remember why we're here. If we write merely to be commercial, to sell a piece of fiction. Then maybe we are merely "average." Anyone could have done it, we say to ourselves. And maybe, occasionally, we are right. I'll admit there are stories I've completed that I found less than interesting by their end. But most of the time I know better. I know better about myself. I know better about Linda Dunn. I know better about Stephen Leigh and about Lisa Silverthorne, and Vera Nazarian, and Diana Rowland and Kurt Roth and Mary Soon Lee and Amy Casil and Christopher Rowe and several others that hang around here. Sometimes we lose track of things, and let waves of life crash down upon us (because, after all, what choices do we have?). But each of these people I named writes to put forward a voice--because, for whatever their individual reasons, there's something inside that has to get out. I know this because I've met each of them. I've talked to them. I've read their fiction. There's not an "average" writer among them when they're saying something important to them, when they are projecting their ever-elusive "voice." Think about it, Linda. You're not an average writer. It's impossible for you to be one. If you don't believe me, go back and read this.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
|
"It is not the hand but the understanding of a man that may be said to write." Miguel de Cervantes |
BACK TO 
|