A Passage From the Haunted Pen…

Here is a reality people do not seem to understand. When writing from one perspective,  one only reaches THAT targeted audience. Whether the subject be the universe, money, politics, whatever…People have their own reality and that is what they will base their judgments of any writing on. It’s the same way when it comes to life, politics, etc…People base their judgments on their own life experiences and it is not fair to condemn them based on those experiences. Everything in life is about perspective and people need to get it through their heads that not everyone will agree with what their perception of the world around them is. It is like viewing the same car accident from 2 different angles. People will see it happening slightly differently every time.

While perspective has to do with art, and how the artist sees it, and perception is about how one interprets something, both fall hand in hand when it comes to writing and/or life experiences. The writer puts the pen to paper and shares his/her interpretation of what is being discussed. It is the audience perception that determines the effectiveness of a writer’s words–and audience members will perceive the same lines differently each time!

Writers will be often misinterpreted, misunderstood and even at times maligned for the words they choose to put to paper. It comes with the territory.  They will also be maligned and such for their own personal views regardless of what they are. That is why I said in an earlier post, there is no need for anyone to have to justify what their opinions are or why they have them  to anyone else.  They are what they are. No writer, artist, actor or whatever is obligated to say, “I feel this way because I…” to anyone, be it a reporter or an armchair expert.  It is not like anyone would be able to change the mind of the author anyway.

My number one rule is as a writer, I will never try to justify what characters represent, why plot lines are written as they are and/or why I do not concern myself with being politically or socially correct when it comes to them.   That does not matter. What matters is being that they represent something from my own life’s perspective, the real question should be “Why reveal them in the way I chose to?”  That is something I have yet to see asked of any writer.  Much of the time they have been asked to justify why they have their characters say or do certain things.  That is the part the reader gets to figure out. I use them to point the direction in solving the entire puzzle. I certainly won’t divulge it in my notes either. It is easy to get lost in the real purpose if one gets hung up on the attitudes/actions of one or two characters.

Why read a book and then ask such a question about it anyway? All characters can be used to drive home several points within the same plot, I believe–as long as a writer does not write a long, drawn out work that is as confusing as Cubist art can be…Yes, it’s about PERCEPTION and Cubist art confounds me and amazes me at the same time.

 

Now you KNOW why it confuses me.

What I will say is that the characters, to me are real. They have a life of their own and they haunt me, and when they do, they come out through the pen.  They can fend for themselves once out there on the page. All I do is play God and bring them to life and/or kill them off when they’ve finally incurred my eternal wrath.

 

To Younger and New Writers: A Cruel Blow and How It Helped Shape My Own Writing…

I find it great that my sons now view me as tough, fair–and unwavering.  I had realistic expectations of them, but I always let them be the individuals that they are and they later thanked me for that.  I vowed never to try to mold my kids into an image that was me and not them.  I grew up in a strict home and individuality was frowned upon to a degree, but I do not think my parents realized that this is what was going on. As I got older, they realized that I thought differently and had different ideas of how the world works, and then they started to listen to me more.  As my writing took on its Frankenstein existence, they definitely began to respect me more after that.  I am sure that I was born at the perfect time on this planet because had I been born, let’s say, 20 years earlier, I probably would have been given a lobotomy for my thoughts alone after being subjected to many rulers and whippings by teachers in front of a classroom for my free-thinking attitude.  My free thinking, as said earlier, always got me in a jam…I am never one to conform to anyone’s ideals of what they think I should be.  No writer should ever get locked into a box from which they can never escape.

However,  my younger son’s  father wanted me to profit from it and I refused.  It led to many fights because he would sneak into my notebooks so I stopped writing until we were divorced.  The final nail for that taking place was when one of my sons and I heard the man tell my best friend that he never loved me from day one.  Cruel isn’t it?  My son felt that he couldn’t love his own children if he couldn’t love their mother and it led to a lot of emotional wreckage which shaped my other stuff.  Some of my notebooks were stolen before and I didn’t want it out there because I write primarily for my satisfaction.  What looks like notes on here at times may very well come directly from my notes, but the ideas behind them work.

I write what I see happening.  It’s almost like watching a movie and it works for me.  It is the one thing that I never allowed anyone to take over or wrestle from my mental grasp.  It became a wonderful way to escape into other worlds I created and a way to punish those who did me harm.  In short, in those worlds I create, I am God.   There is something empowering about having the power of life and death in a pen–but there are times when writing off a good character has it’s purpose as well, so no…I don’t simply use it to kill off bullies and negative boneheads.

Some of my characters are actually what I refer to as closet exhibitionists for the simple reason that they would love to just say “Damn the torpedoes! Screw this! I’ve had it!” and then just let the other characters that tick them off have it!  However they don’t because they fear the unknown–the result.  Some never go into professions they wanted and are held back while others follow their gut instinct and are well rewarded later for it–maybe not in the way they anticipated, but they are rewarded.

However there is a reality that some people don’t seem to be able to envision simply  because they are too close to the soul of the issue…The rainbow….That is right…The rainbow.  In reflecting on my life and how all the events in it shaped me–my parents divorce, the wives Dad had that I knew of, and my grandparent’s influence, I did realize that at the end of this place a rainbow is present…When we see that rainbow, that is when  we finally believe that there is a purpose in all things and forms as well as in life itself.  It is also the point in which we realize in this life that it is not what you take with you, but what you leave behind that truly matters because like the ripples in a pond, those waves keep travelling–only that becomes your legacy.  It travels forever and others can learn from it, but the genealogy begins within your own voice–and emanates from YOUR own pen.  Two people got me to writing again.  I think they know who they are. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do in the process.

I have grown to understand that I do not have to please everyone, and for you younger writer’s you simply need to grasp that you do not have to either.  Your writing comes from your soul…When you write faster than a dust devil in a hot sandstorm in the Mojave Desert that is stretching its arms out and  throwing cacti specimens around at everything in its path, this is the point at which your blood is boiling as you bring your characters, your plots and your backgrounds into a three-dimensional realm.  Your paper is your canvas for this chaos and that’s what you should use it for. Show the world YOUR picture as you bring your creatures to life and move them through their plots.  When you let your imagination run wild, a pen is now a wand and you are creating your own magic too…

That rainbow has many colors–but the only one visible is what others who read your work see, unless they have that gift of seeing between those lines and into the souls of your characters…If you have done a good enough job of creating those life forms from the nothingness of the universe, then you have created a rainbow of many colors for them…Sometimes it is better to see with the heart than with the eyes anyway–and they will see all those colors if you make these characters real, feeling beings..

Now for those of you with a normal upbringing and existence that want to write nice things with happy endings, disregard this post because you can’t allow that dust devil to come through…It can be an angel, a beloved pet, Bugs Bunny or whatever but unless you’ve had to deal with more drama than what TNT offers, it is hard to write from that perspective…Again, WRITE FROM your own perspective and nobody else’s. You’ll be less likely to get ulcers that way.  And you also might lead someone else to their own rainbow through your pen a lot quicker.