This is the last article I will be writing for this website. Part of me is inclined to write an article like other articles: there’s always something that needs to be said about political integrity, living rightly, the economy of time, etc.—inexhaustible topics. Like most people, I have a few issues that just nag at my conscience.
The conscience is a powerful thing; if it tells me something is important, I either have to do something about it or let it rest. Letting it rest is an icky feeling. But now I am letting it rest, at least for this platform.
I have no pretensions about myself as a writer. I’m good at it, but if you give me ten seconds I’ll spout a list of peers who can do better. That doesn’t matter for what I’m trying to say. To a point, writing is writing. Each week, I wrote words. Just like Shakespeare did. Just like kindergartners learning the alphabet. Some elements of writing are universal. There is always a writer, a reader and whatever is written.
What scares me is the effect on the writer. Recently, I read Roland Barthes “The Death of the Author.” He tosses off the influential idea that the intent of the author has no bearing on the meaning of a work. It’s a solid idea – it isn’t as if we can ever retrace the true ideas of the author when they were writing. I doubt even the author can do that. But for all its accuracy, death is a frightening term to use – perhaps because of its accuracy.
The creative process of writing is organic: the ideas writing is formed in have to pass away. Readers pick up what’s written and create new ideas. Writing draws heavily on the much-loved theme of rebirth. Being organic, it has to involve some sort of death. I guess Barthes is right.
That sucks. Authors are reduced to nutrients. Every time a reader reads, she becomes better equipped for further reading. The author is dead to this process. The act of writing is obsolete as soon as it is over, for words are “eternally written here and now.”
Weirdly, most writers are also readers. They support the vile consumption. Perhaps it is the writers who need it most; more literary work requires more fuel.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Writing is great – I’m doing it right now and I’m loving it – but it cannot be denied that there is a strange and rarely noted cost. Writing requires us to give of ourselves. As soon as the gift is given, it is separated from our identity and ceases as we know it. That’s hard. No one wants to destroy a bit of themselves.
Over time, I’ve gotten used to the exchange: I give a little and take a lot. Time has invested me in the process. Because of this investment, I’m tied to the places where my writing lives.
When I write an article here, I am usually writing with the assumption that I’ll be writing once more in a week or so. There is a prospect of revival and new communion. Not anymore. This is me tying off the last stitch of a cycle. It doesn’t feel organic, because it isn’t.
The moral of the story: writing can be painful, but it is good and natural as long as it stays in its ecosystem. Don’t undervalue it.
