Why I write

Going through these courses, I've been prompted on many occasions to reflect on aspects of my writing. There have been broad, educative questions like: How do I write? Who do I write for? What do I write? Why do I choose to write this or that?

The one question that never really comes up is why. Why do I write? I wanted to address this issue, to get it down in some solid form, perhaps to deny myself at some later date some sanctimonious prattle I might use to justify why I haven't fed the cat, or marked those papers, or why I didn't look up from my laptop and at least afford my husband some recognition when he came home disheartened and in need of a chat.

This isn't really a reflection as much as a confession. And I don't want the reader to infer that I feel all writers are like me. I can't speak for them, only myself.

Perhaps I write some good things. Perhaps my readers gain satisfaction or insight or a feeling of fellowship when they read what I write. It's not that I disavow the product of my labours, or belittle them. But the behind the product is motive for the production, and I have to admit that it's wholly selfish.

I write for ego gratification. I'm not entirely sure I can put into words exactly by what mechanism writing gives me this gratification, but I think my need for a reader as an integral part of my writing process does give me some hint. I once wrote, on the discussion board of my writers' list, that when I write erotica, I have a sense of having sex with every one who reads it; the fact that I can get into their mind and engage their erotic imagination is a central part of why I write. So, pulling out into the broader landscape, I write as an act of promiscuity.

This is not as sophisticated an act as I might like; images of males in rut frantically mounting any available female do seem uncomfortably apt. The DNA of my ideas eagerly injects itself into as many receptive minds as possible, to be mixed with the readers thought DNA and, by way of all that chromosomal crossing over, and the magic of how all the dominant and recessive genes express themselves, something new is born - part me, part reader. This is all the more apt because of what I write - although I don't think it would be different if I wrote something other than erotica. I'm having a very gratifying congress with you right now, at this very moment. I do hope you don't mind. Soon, the cells of our hybrid creation will start to divide and multiply. I thank you in advance for being the one to carry the embryo.

Of course, I've carried a lot of these hybrid embryos myself, which is why I'm not too concerned that this is going to be an undue hardship for you. I've carried the children of Camus and Bronte, of Heidegger and St. Thomas Aquinas, of Austen and Lao Tse. As a reader, I have been mother to thousands and thousands of hybrid children of the writers I have read. Most of them turned out okay.

I don't want to hide anymore behind protestations of altruism or addiction. At the same time, I believe my reason for writing informs you that I'm no misanthrope. I would not seek congress with so many minds if I didn't at a very basic level, love humanity. But I don't do it for humanity. I do it for myself, to extend my ego outwards, into both time and space, with a view to immortality.

620 words (2,120 and counting)

Writing the "Other"

From Edward Said to Gayatri Spivak, there are a thousand reasons to fear writing the "Other", the person you're not, the culture you don't belong to, the language that isn't your first, the story that isn't your own.

And yet what great writer has not attempted it? Should Shakespeare not have dared to put words in Shylock's mouth? Should he have stayed out Othello's bed? Should Dickens have stuck to stories of his own class and left the poor of London to write about themselves? Should Ishiguro stop writing about the British aristocracy or about Nagasaki?

I can't accept that I must only write stories about "my own kind". What started as a plea to allow the historically silent their own authentic voices has ended up by silencing others. Was that the aim of the post-colonial theorists?

As a writer, I'm torn on this rock. I don't for a moment trivialize the damage that has been done historically, nor the trotting out of stereotypical ethnic characters that happens today in the name of popular culture or fiscal expediency. I know a stereotype when I see one, because I'm one myself. I get filed under the category of "Neurotic Jew".

Does that give me the right to write the "Other"? Because I am one and, hey, we "Others" should stick together? No.

I maintain that I have the right to write the "Other" because they are humans as I am a human and the thing that separates us is a thin veneer that has kept us apart for too long already. Because although we may come from different cultures, we all have culture and we are both nourished and starved, enlightened and blinded, freed and trapped by it - each and everyone of us. Our biologies both drive us and keep us from our dreams. Our relationships with others ground us, nurture us, betray us and make us whole.

Christianity may teach us that: "there but for the grace of god go I". I prefer a more Buddhist view on the matter: "there because of the grace of god go I." And going back to my roots, if I can commit the unforgivable sin of marrying a gentile, I sure as hell can write about them.

And what of the subaltern and the unnamed native informant? If there has been any justice in the world it is that most of us, regardless of origin have become that. If you aren't Bill Gates or the latest hot thing in Hollywood, you might as well have no name for all the possibility of anyone remembering it. If you're female and over forty, it's even worse. Not only do you have no name, but you become invisible. My mother warned me of this when I was thirty; I didn't believe her. I've spent the last 5 years apologizing.

And yet, and yet... how many main characters can one novel take? I realize this is a brutal question but it goes to the heart of the matter. The very structure of narrative as we know it requires that some characters be fully fleshed out and explored and others left to tell their stories another time. Should I just make sure all my minor characters are white?

In my novel, The Waiting Room, I have a subaltern. A hotel maid who is nameless and speechless, a witness to the excesses of a western couple travelling through Cambodia. I KNOW what she is, literarily. I wrote her exactly that way and I knew exactly what I was doing. Because in the eyes of westerner tourists who drift through the poor countries of Southeast Asia as if it were a funkier version of Disneyland, there *are* subalterns. And I want my readers to know this, and see it.

Does she have a name? Of course she does; her name is Reaksmey. And a life and love and dreams and hatreds? Yes. She has all these things. Does she deserve a book of her own? Hell yes, I've never met a human who didn't. But this was not her book, it belonged to someone else.

The best I can do is write what I write intentionally, fully cognizant of the sins I commit, and do it with the noblest motives I can muster.

(700 words /1,500 and counting)

Why a blog...

The course I'm currently taking, LPW700 - The Writerly Self, requires that I keep a reflective journal:

LPW700 The Writerly Self invites you keep a record or journal in about 3,000 to 5,000 words of your development as a writer with particular emphasis on the period of this unit. This involves you understanding and articulating your insights into why you write and how you go about achieving what you want to convey to an audience. This journal may take the form of an essay that reflects upon the journey that you have made to understand and develop your 'writerly self'.

The journal/essay could consist of diary-style entries or of a more formal reflective piece.

My gut feeling is that this is not really an "invitation", although I do appreciate being allowed to maintain the illusion that I have a choice in the matter.

I liked the idea of making this a cosy, chatty diary. Something I could use to pour all my angst into when the module seems impenetrable, but it would be hard to keep in mind that, ultimately, I'm not writing this for myself. Someone will read it.

In fact, one of the ominous boxes on the assessment marking rubric says: "5. Your work indicates a clear sense of audience". Now, if I just kept a chatty, cosy diary, then I wouldn't be at all worried about who the audience was at all. The audience would, like any unself-conscious diary, be me.

This is why I've decided to keep a blog instead. It will serve to remind me that someone will be reading and assessing this. It'll keep me nervous, on my toes, and stop me from straying off the straight and narrow. Well, hopefully.

The other reason to make this a blog is because blogs are an integral part of my life. I already keep about 10 of them. Some for fiction, some for commentary, some for my students. I love them. I love the accessibility, the democracy, the interactiveness, the visuality of them. I love that anyone with a computer and internet access can make one. You don't need to know any coding (although I do). You don't need to be a graphic designer (although I am). You don't even have to be a particularly good writer (which I can be, on occasion). They allow anyone to make anything that can be stored in digital form available to anyone else in the world with a computer and internet access. It's really the latest word in intellectual generosity.

And like all the writing projects I ever embark on, I needed to create something visual to mark the start of it. And so, although the template this blog is generated from was originally created by FinalSense.com and you can get one of your own there, I did do a little tweaking to the header and footer to make it mine. This desire to visually "brand" everything kind of speaks to who I am as a graphic designer. But perhaps it also says a quite a bit about how much I am affected internally by the consumer culture that surrounds me. I hope not; I hope it's just my desire to create unity in my work, to have something be all of-a-piece. But you never really know, do you?

A blog can be as visually stimulating as one likes. Although many people do not use it that way, it can incorporate practically any form of multimedia. This can, of course, be a distraction. The non-text-based can easily overwhelm the written word. I have to be careful to keep my forays into the visual limited to what will enhance my point. Still, I like having the option of embedding images, audio, video, etc. into this reflective journal. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and since I've got a limit of 5,000 of them, I figure that I might just require some explanatory shortcuts.

Blogs are also like terminals. They can take you to other places. I can hyperlink ideas and take you to examples or illustrations of them. Since I don't have access to a public library, one of my favourite places in the world is Google Books. There's a sublime delight in being able to word-search through a tome I've read and find the exact passage I want in the blink of an eye. Being without a library has also forced me to read a lot of books in the public domain at the Project Gutenberg.

Finally, what I love more than anything else about blogs is that they allow for interaction. Anyone reading this post can comment on it. Many of the writers I know have blogs. As published Gods they seem distant, unreal and unaccessible, but as bloggers I can read their posts and ask questions, comment on their work and comment on the comments. One of my favourite blogging writers is William Gibson.

Last semester I took a course called "Writing History". My project was a spacial and time-based representation of the French Indochina war using Google Earth. In the assessment comments, Kitty, my tutor, remarked that I had not adequately defended my choice to use the Google Earth platform for my project. She had a point; it was a very fair criticism.

This time, I hope I've adequately explained myself.

(800 words and counting)