Today, a number of professional writers with
blogs have gotten together to write the same post “Why I Became a Writer.”
Please stop by any or all of their blogs to comment and find out what drives us
in our favorite obsession. My post
follows the links.
John Brantingham and
Sunny Frazier http://johnbrantingham.blogspot.com/
Marta Chausee http://martachausee.blogspot.com/
John Daniel http://johnmdaniel.blogspot.com/.
Cora Ramos http://coraramos-cora.blogspot.com/
Melodie Campbell http://funnygirlmelodie.blogspot.com/
Lesley Diehl http://anotherdraught.blogspot.com
Jim Callan www.jamesrcallan.com/blog
Chris Swinney http://clswinney.com
John Lewis http://www.Lions-post.blogspot.com
Stephen Brayton www.stephenbrayton.com
Carole Avila http://caroleavilablog.wordpress.com/
Augie Hicks http://augiecorner.blogspot.com
Why I Became a
Writer or
Why What’s Good
for the Writer is not Always Good for the Reader
If I tell you I was a psychologist and
college professor before I retired and took up writing murder mysteries, you
won’t be surprised if I admit I did so for purposes of revenge, that cathartic
release that comes with venting. Psychologists
embrace catharsis because it’s assumed to be good for the psyche, cleans out
the cobwebs of anger, disgust, and dislike and allows the person to move on
emotionally. My first manuscript was one
in which the bad guys were the administrators and professors who “done me wrong”
all the years I was in higher education, a place that shares the competitiveness
and back-biting with most large businesses, but disguises those unsavory
elements by purporting to be a learning environment. We educators try to keep all that bad stuff a
secret.
That manuscript didn’t even try to
disguise the identities of the people I sought to pillory. It was never published (I’m so grateful). I did learn from it, however. First, I found killing off people you don’t
like on paper is quiet satisfying, the more so because you never have to pay
for your crime. After over one hundred
thousand words of bile that I was wise enough to bind in humor, I felt a sense
of catharsis, but no feeling of accomplishment.
Catharsis for the writer is not always good reading. It’s selfish.
When I finally had the sense to wrap my characters in reality, give them
reasonable motivations for their behavior, forgive them their flaws by playing
them up to be funny and disguised them as characters, not the original
perpetrators of my anger and disgust, I realized the most important lesson of
all—I had a story. It was a tale where I
trusted readers through my descriptions of events, characters interacting with
one another and a spritely plot to arrive at their own conclusions about how
much drawing and quartering should be directed at the now not-so-bad as
misdirected folks. Oh yeah, the killer was
still a despicable person, but you’d never recognize the murderer as anyone of
my former colleagues.
Here’s the second big thing I
learned. You’ll always find there is
someone in your life who will treat you unfairly and you’ll find
unpleasant. So why hold a grudge? Simply write those situations into a story
and bump off the guy. There’s no need to
identify him as your next door neighbor or the woman in your exercise
class. Allow, as I do, an alligator to
death roll the witch from the checkout line.
Whatever you do, transform your most hated enemy into a most
unforgettable character, but do it in such a way that all the anger is gone, and
the character is unrecognizable as someone you know or hated to know. You’ll have a heck of a good time writing it
all, and your reader will love you for it.
No more catharsis for me. Just fun writing.
