Thank you for sharing your thoughts on reasons for writing, Sheryl. Your response was articulate and felt familiar.
As for: "I liked the idea that maybe my writing would connect with someone else"--
I forget that someone might read my writing, or listen to my music, and be moved by it. Art is something that I want/have to do for myself but I forget about my own ability to affect others, to move my audience in the way that I am moved by literature and music.
I think that I've always had some guilt about my chosen "career" of artist. The Mennonite Church is generally a little guilt-ridden about art. It's important in the church that your work help others, that study and art be not only for the artist. Goshen College's motto is, "Culture for Service" and feels like an apology. The college is founded on the idea that students study, become cultured, for the purpose of serving the world after school.
And I fear that I've been writing as a sort of catharsis, hoping to get myself sorted out so that I can move on and be of service in the community. But I don't want to be a nurse and I don't want to be a social worker. And because I don't want to I would be terrible at it.
And, really, being an artist is a sort of service. To be willing to visit the underworld and bring something back. And this notion of writing as service, as a method of contributing to the world rather than self-indulgent therapy makes me want to get to work...
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6 comments:
Absolutely writing is a sort of service!!! The great thing about the kind of writing we do is that it can serve both the writer and the reader. Writing and teaching are great professions that go hand-in-hand as well. Teaching writing is wonderful: you get to help young and old people become more intimate with themselves and shape the knowledge of that intimacy into something useful to others. I still like what Neruda said, that poetry (and I would add creative nonfiction and fiction) should be like bread, and by that I take him to mean that it feeds your soul as well as, possibly, your body.
i agree!!! so much so that i even used three exclamation points, just like sheryl.
while writing is a catharsis for the author, sure, the whole reason we send things out into the world, releasing our words from the lock and key of our personal diaries, is to reach other people. we have the power to take our own experiences and make them relevant to the outside world.
how freeing. how desperately important.
desperately important. i like that.
and really if i'm in the underworld already might as well bring something back... :-)
Emily, I agree and I have experienced a similar guilt with choosing arts over "service"...or at least the type of service I was geared towards. But you are right in that creative writing is a service. Without writing, music, and being connected to the arts in general, I think I would shrivel away into a corner and slowly rock myself into insanity.
Your writing, your music, you voice is your gift to others and by sharing them you connect with others...and people need to feel connected, so it is definitely a service.
I often feel like I have to apologize for choosing a degree that is selfishly enjoyable but practically "useless." Thanks for reminding why it's important.
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