Ramblings on Writers and Writing

Yesterday, John and I took the bus to downtown Nashville for the 15th annual Southern Festival of Books, a gathering for writers, publishers, book sellers, and book lovers. There were tents set up with books on sale, chances to meet the authors, different organizations for writers, etc. There were also book talks, special speakers, and book signings. Unfortunately, John and I failed to locate a program until we were leaving to catch our bus, so we missed all the good speakers, including Sherman Alexie, which was a real shame. However, I did talk John into a watermelon snowcone and a children's book reading by the author of The Knot Fairy, The Sock Fairy, and other fairy tales. Poor John was, of course, bored out of his mind, but I thought the reading was delightful.

One thing I noticed at the festival was how ordinary the writers we met were. I'm not sure what I was expecting...Jaques Derrida? Edgar Allen Poe? They were just very ordinary people who wanted to share their books with the world (and get paid for it). One very elderly woman told me all about her children's book Too Tall Alice, walking me through the whole idea and plot with so much tenderness for her dear little book. I felt like a jerk to put it back on the table and move on. She really loved that book.

I guess I'm writing this to say to all of you secretly and publicly aspiring writers: go for it! Write your books and poems and stories and blogs. Perhaps the ordinariness of life has a bigger part to play in writing well than I've realized. Perhaps being ordinary is what actually makes us good writers. I think that what makes ordinary writers exceptional is the ability to find the holy in the every day, to find beauty and meaning in laundry and dishes and stinky diapers, in the schedules and setbacks and monotony of things, in ordinary life. My very best college professor, Dr. Cotton, always says that he likes good writers better than great writers, which mostly I think means that he likes the writers who are ordinary people, not the geniuses. He likes the Mary Olivers, the Lucille Cliftons, the Raymond Carvers. Good writers are those who capture life as it is, who tell the truth about things in a beautiful way, who make us see the world as if for the first time.

I think I've been afraid to write because I fear that I won't be Virginia Woolf; I won't be Mary Oliver; I won't write the Pulitzer Prize winning piece of literary greatness. What if my writing turns out to be a Wal-mart clearance shelf book? (Shudder.) I guess that's the risk you have to take when you're writing; the risk that you won't be as good as you thought or hoped; that your book will be ignored or criticized; that no literary magazine in the entire world will want to publish your work, much less pay you for it.

Josh Ritter has a song with a line that says, "God, have mercy on the man who sings to be adored." I think that's true for writers too. You can't write for publication, for hope of being the next Denise Levertov. You have to write for the love of it, for the need of it. For the same reasons that you pray and work and live.