On Pain
A writer without an incurable pain, will not create anything of significance. This may seem maudlin, but upon examination one finds it to be a terrible truth of the artistic process. If properly distilled and directed, pain leads to great art. If “resistance is the secret to joy” as Alice Walker once said, then Acquiescence is the secret to writing. And in the act of writing, there is no joy. Only that desperate reaching out, that desire to connect, that naive act of thinking that things as inadequate as words can reach the shores of true understanding. No joy, only striving against the darkness. Writing is not the light at the end of the tunnel, writing IS the tunnel. It is the crawling. It is the mud. And only by hand and knee will you become great.
To write a story once must be familiar with the world. One must live. Any person can be taught structure, framing, language, the rhythms of dialogue, the harmonies of form. But to be a writer one must be more than talented; one must also be interesting. And darling, you just can’t teach interesting. Once must BECOME interesting. If you haven’t had a hard time paying rent, if you haven’t drank cheap booze in cemeteries, if you haven’t ever been hungry, if you haven’t ever cried over a dead friend, if you haven’t had to work a job you hated, if you haven’t had someone treat you unfairly, if you haven’t gotten your heart broken, if you haven’t gone dancing until 6am and made armfuls of mistakes, if you haven’t every had a desire inside you that was as great as it was impossible to reach – how, can you expect to be interesting? How can you expect to have anything to write about?
There is the argument to consider, that all humans experiences pain. All Life is Suffering, an ever-present truth in this hard world. But there are those who live ignoring as much as they possibly can. Turning their heads, they stand cocked to the side like flamingos in a marsh, staring at a thing that is slightly less interesting than the actual thing. And when they fly, the sky turns into a sunrise. There are others who stand in the center of the road when they walk. And as dusk approaches, they do not move to the edge, but continue waiting in the center of path, waiting for the consequences of their actions to roll straight through them.
Be brave. And write!