When one is a writer, it is imperative one has the ability to listen with a perceptive ear, look with an observant eye and ask questions with the twisting, conniving ability of a lawyer -- it doesn't hurt to drink lots of coffee either. Unlike most professions where a person is given a set of demands, the utensils to work with, and a predictable end result, a writer's life is unpredictable, under appreciated and underrated. Our job is to ask the right people the right questions and hopefully get the right responses. If not, we perform a little rearranging of facts to make it seem as if what we wanted to happen did, indeed, happen. I wouldn't call it lying so much as thinly spreading the truth.
A writer, in the solitude of his own booth at Starbucks, will sit for hours tap, tap, tapping away creating worlds to exist the way he wants them to. Sometimes though, after all the facts have been arranged an rearranged, the answer is still not quite right. Writing, like life, doesn't always yield easy solutions. It is said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but what if you do examine life and find there are certain questions that don't have an answer? Should we rearrange the facts to fit the question, or would that be considered lying? Should we restate the question to fit the answer, or is that just us trying to fool ourselves? Must we seek the truth at all? And if so, whose truth? Society's, a higher power's, or is our own truth enough?
A writer, in the solitude of his own booth at Starbucks, will sit for hours tap, tap, tapping away creating worlds to exist the way he wants them to. Sometimes though, after all the facts have been arranged an rearranged, the answer is still not quite right. Writing, like life, doesn't always yield easy solutions. It is said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but what if you do examine life and find there are certain questions that don't have an answer? Should we rearrange the facts to fit the question, or would that be considered lying? Should we restate the question to fit the answer, or is that just us trying to fool ourselves? Must we seek the truth at all? And if so, whose truth? Society's, a higher power's, or is our own truth enough?
No comments:
Post a Comment