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shadowkatMe: I wanted to be a writer. It is the one thing I always wanted.
Momster: But You are a writer.
Me: No -
Momster: You write all the time, entries in a journal, several books, long business memos, articles for church...constantly.
Me: I'm not published
Momster: You mean you are not a recognized writer, but that does not mean you aren't a writer, a really good writer at that.
After reading The Fault in Our Stars...it occurs to me that we do not see ourselves so clearly or the world around us for that matter.
Hazel Grace: You are never satisfied. You want to be a hero, you are afraid you will not live to do great things. So you won't be an NBA basketball star, a noble prize winner, a great war hero or live old and become a famous writer like Peter Van Houten...those things can't happen. But you loved me, we had a love, we did these things, you touched people - it's as if I'm not -
I've read all these blurbs from self-help books about hunting a purpose, finding a way to contribute and touch lives in great ways, to do what we love...and yet, I wonder...am I not doing it in my own fashion.
Momster: I remember reading your work as a child, it wasn't very good. Now, it's night and day.
Me: I worked hard at it...but never quite -
Momster: No, you did. You are a marvelous writer now. You worked on it all the time and continue to do so. Daily. You write business memos and things and that can't be easy. I don't know how you do it.
Me: I love to write.
Walking through Barnes and Noble today...it struck me, how many writers there are. Of different shades and sizes and strokes. So many in the Young Adult field. Then I wandered into Book Court and saw still more. Different ones. The two book stores did not, oddly, carry all the same books, you'd think they would. But no. Catherynne Valente was in Barnes and Noble but not in Book Court, while Lauren Groff appeared to be only in Book Court, although I could be wrong about that. I found it reassuring to see so many...to realize how many I'd never heard of. To know to write doesn't mean to survive past one's due date...merely to tell a story that touches others, while the writer falls away. I know this because I flipped through John Green's other works and much as Hazel Grace realizes about Peter Van Houten...I realized the writer is not the story. Even if it somehow magically arises from his or her mind. It took me a while to figure it out about Whedon as well.
We or I fall in love with a book or story, whether it be in film, book or tv form...and when it completes...I find myself hunting other works by that writer, hunting more. I want more of that story I loved. I want it to continue forever. Not to end. I want to marry that story. I want to be it's wife and bride. To sleep with it (and I actually did try to do this as a little girl - it didn't work but I did literally try it - I tended to want to make the metaphorical literal back then as small children often will seeing very little difference between the two or at least I didn't). To live with it. I do not want it to end. I do not want to let it go. I will replay it in mind. I will re-read it. I will re-watch. And how dare the writer kill off any of the characters.
But it does end, of course. It stops. Even if it is in a middle of sentence. There's an end.
And even if you search out and manage to find other books by that same writer - you won't find that same story. Even if you are lucky enough to hunt the writer down, and find him or her on a blog, on the internet, in their house, at a con - the most you will get is a picture taken, an autograph and maybe some new stories, but no answers to the one you read. No true sequel or continuation past its expiration date. You can't bribe them to give you what they don't have.
And you realize that its not the writer you love, that the writer isn't your best friend, but his or her story.
And extrapolating this to God and the idea of a creator...I realize it's not the creator that I have a relationship with but his or her or its creations. It's not the universe, but the universe's output. My relationship to the creator or the eternal something or whatever you wish to call this...is through its/his/her's creations. I am part of those creations part of those stories.
The writer drops away. Or does he/she?But who is remembered the writer or the story? Does the writer bury his/her creations? Shakespeare sometimes did, we didn't often even know their names, as did Poe, who was Annabelle Lee? And who was the narrator who talked so beautifully of her place beneath the sea? Or what about JD Salinger and his eternally lost Holden Caulfield who shares a seat with the original lost little boy Peter Pan? Do we remember them or their creators? Jane Austen's creations live past her...other's continue her stories, feeling perhaps the same need I do for more, what happened after Elizabeth Bennett and Darcy married? Did they have a good marriage? And what territories did Huck Finn explore, did Huck ever fall in love? I wanted to marry Huck Finn as a little girl, fall into the book and pull him out and marry him.
I'm odd. Some people collect pieces of artwork, trinkets, jewelry, bags, shoes, accessories...me?
I buy stories - whether in book, DVD, or even CD form. I buy stories. My apartment is cluttered with other people's stories. Stories I've fallen inside of.
But I often, as The Fault in Our Stars states so beautifully, I often forget the characters for the writer. I'm thinking of Maria Doria Russell's the Sparrow - I can't remember those characters names and yet I adored them. I can't remember the names of the characters of Donna Tartt's Secret History or for that matter Sherri Teppar's Grass. And it worries me...did the writer bury their characters under their own name?
I hope to remember Buffy more than Whedon. For it is the characters of Buffy that I fell in love with not their creators - whose faces and names I didn't even know when I started watching long ago. And I hope to remember Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters and Issac from Fault in Our Stars.
As a writer myself...I still hope for the day when I can publish my own stories and a reader will fall for my characters and I'll drop away...from the page.
Momster: But You are a writer.
Me: No -
Momster: You write all the time, entries in a journal, several books, long business memos, articles for church...constantly.
Me: I'm not published
Momster: You mean you are not a recognized writer, but that does not mean you aren't a writer, a really good writer at that.
After reading The Fault in Our Stars...it occurs to me that we do not see ourselves so clearly or the world around us for that matter.
Hazel Grace: You are never satisfied. You want to be a hero, you are afraid you will not live to do great things. So you won't be an NBA basketball star, a noble prize winner, a great war hero or live old and become a famous writer like Peter Van Houten...those things can't happen. But you loved me, we had a love, we did these things, you touched people - it's as if I'm not -
I've read all these blurbs from self-help books about hunting a purpose, finding a way to contribute and touch lives in great ways, to do what we love...and yet, I wonder...am I not doing it in my own fashion.
Momster: I remember reading your work as a child, it wasn't very good. Now, it's night and day.
Me: I worked hard at it...but never quite -
Momster: No, you did. You are a marvelous writer now. You worked on it all the time and continue to do so. Daily. You write business memos and things and that can't be easy. I don't know how you do it.
Me: I love to write.
Walking through Barnes and Noble today...it struck me, how many writers there are. Of different shades and sizes and strokes. So many in the Young Adult field. Then I wandered into Book Court and saw still more. Different ones. The two book stores did not, oddly, carry all the same books, you'd think they would. But no. Catherynne Valente was in Barnes and Noble but not in Book Court, while Lauren Groff appeared to be only in Book Court, although I could be wrong about that. I found it reassuring to see so many...to realize how many I'd never heard of. To know to write doesn't mean to survive past one's due date...merely to tell a story that touches others, while the writer falls away. I know this because I flipped through John Green's other works and much as Hazel Grace realizes about Peter Van Houten...I realized the writer is not the story. Even if it somehow magically arises from his or her mind. It took me a while to figure it out about Whedon as well.
We or I fall in love with a book or story, whether it be in film, book or tv form...and when it completes...I find myself hunting other works by that writer, hunting more. I want more of that story I loved. I want it to continue forever. Not to end. I want to marry that story. I want to be it's wife and bride. To sleep with it (and I actually did try to do this as a little girl - it didn't work but I did literally try it - I tended to want to make the metaphorical literal back then as small children often will seeing very little difference between the two or at least I didn't). To live with it. I do not want it to end. I do not want to let it go. I will replay it in mind. I will re-read it. I will re-watch. And how dare the writer kill off any of the characters.
But it does end, of course. It stops. Even if it is in a middle of sentence. There's an end.
And even if you search out and manage to find other books by that same writer - you won't find that same story. Even if you are lucky enough to hunt the writer down, and find him or her on a blog, on the internet, in their house, at a con - the most you will get is a picture taken, an autograph and maybe some new stories, but no answers to the one you read. No true sequel or continuation past its expiration date. You can't bribe them to give you what they don't have.
And you realize that its not the writer you love, that the writer isn't your best friend, but his or her story.
And extrapolating this to God and the idea of a creator...I realize it's not the creator that I have a relationship with but his or her or its creations. It's not the universe, but the universe's output. My relationship to the creator or the eternal something or whatever you wish to call this...is through its/his/her's creations. I am part of those creations part of those stories.
The writer drops away. Or does he/she?But who is remembered the writer or the story? Does the writer bury his/her creations? Shakespeare sometimes did, we didn't often even know their names, as did Poe, who was Annabelle Lee? And who was the narrator who talked so beautifully of her place beneath the sea? Or what about JD Salinger and his eternally lost Holden Caulfield who shares a seat with the original lost little boy Peter Pan? Do we remember them or their creators? Jane Austen's creations live past her...other's continue her stories, feeling perhaps the same need I do for more, what happened after Elizabeth Bennett and Darcy married? Did they have a good marriage? And what territories did Huck Finn explore, did Huck ever fall in love? I wanted to marry Huck Finn as a little girl, fall into the book and pull him out and marry him.
I'm odd. Some people collect pieces of artwork, trinkets, jewelry, bags, shoes, accessories...me?
I buy stories - whether in book, DVD, or even CD form. I buy stories. My apartment is cluttered with other people's stories. Stories I've fallen inside of.
But I often, as The Fault in Our Stars states so beautifully, I often forget the characters for the writer. I'm thinking of Maria Doria Russell's the Sparrow - I can't remember those characters names and yet I adored them. I can't remember the names of the characters of Donna Tartt's Secret History or for that matter Sherri Teppar's Grass. And it worries me...did the writer bury their characters under their own name?
I hope to remember Buffy more than Whedon. For it is the characters of Buffy that I fell in love with not their creators - whose faces and names I didn't even know when I started watching long ago. And I hope to remember Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters and Issac from Fault in Our Stars.
As a writer myself...I still hope for the day when I can publish my own stories and a reader will fall for my characters and I'll drop away...from the page.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-11 06:00 pm (UTC)I've experienced it a TINY bit. My OC Alex (the Master's son) is probably the first character I'd call properly *mine*. Yes he's heavily dependent on the framework of DW, but he's utterly his own. And one of the most marvellous things is that