ESSAY | ON WRITING

Driven Like Snow in A Storm, I Write

Why

Why

Sometimes blown like dry, lite snow across the open plains, I search for an inspiration to drift up against and engulf — something, anything, around which to wrap my mind and encase in words.

I sit in my recliner or stand at the counter washing dishes, or I shower and make my bed all the while adrift in my mind aching for something upon which to write.

What is it that drives me in that way?

It is the need of a purpose to continue to breathe.

I’m a stranger in a strange land, a long-retired septuagenarian carried in his fifties by happenstance and duty from an engaging life in San Diego at the edge of the Pacific to a semi-isolated life in land-locked Fayetteville, Arkansas, at the edge of the Deep South — a place I never thought to be. I’m an urbane, urban-centric, atheistic, gay liberal Democrat living in an Oz where Dorothy in her red pumps is kept chained in the closet, where the wizard is a burly, bearded bubba with an open carry permit, and where the munchkins are all Christian Republicans who flew in on planes with two right wings. It’s a land of such hardline, evangelical religiosity as I hoped never to inhabit or have to endure.

For such a man in such a place, the need to escape to a more familiar time and space is intense. Writing on Medium, where inclusivity and diversity are celebrated, to an audience of sophisticates is one road there. So, in those darker times when I need a reason to continue, I search for something to write and a Medium publication to which to submit it.

I came later in life to my second career, the law. I loved law school. I loved exploring a new, complex, innovatory way of thinking. I loved the research and the interactions with the faculty. I loved the law itself. But I found that I loved writing legal briefs the most. Moreover, I was good at it all. I became a litigator. Litigation is only partly carried out in court. Most of it is discovery of the other sides evidence, pretrial motion practice, and post-trial appellate practice. Writing is integral to those.

Exercising my talent in my new career, writing became my business. I became a word mercenary. I got to beat up horribly on the other guy, usually Goliath to my client David. I got to do it with the written word. Society not only approved but rewarded me handsomely for it.

Today, I write on Medium under the nom de plume The Wordsmith™🏳️‍🌈🇺🇸. It’s my little conceit deriving from that time I was a professional smithy of words. I wrote then for my client who couldn’t represent himself. I wrote for the judge who needed persuading. I wrote for posterity when the point of law was new or controversial and needed settling.

I no longer write in prosecution or defense, but to entertain, entice, engage, or inform. It gives me a reason to breathe another day.

A friend once asked Oscar Wilde whether he enjoyed writing. Reflexively, he replied, “Yes.” But he considered for a moment, then said, “Actually, it’s having written I enjoy.”

What drives me are both the writing and the having written. I enjoy the process, the search for that precisely correct word, and the arranging of the sentences in just the right order, the paragraphs in their proper sequence. I enjoy the satisfaction of having produced something another might read and think, “Gee, that was nice. I’m glad I read that. Thank you.”

I believe it was Isaac Beshevis Singer who once said that for him, writing was sitting down of a morning at his desk and filling a page with words, then spending the rest of the day pushing them around with a pencil until they fell into the correct order.

For me, the pushing is not labor but fun, and the having pushed is satisfaction magnified by whatever order of magnitude the pushing was difficult. Who doesn’t like finding satisfaction in play?

Sometimes dropping like heavy wet snow on an arid Kansas landscape, my mind falls upon an idea that begs expressing like the land begs refreshing. Just like the snow has no other place to go, my mind knows no other destination but the end of a writing journey that will see that idea manifested in words.

One calls that inspiration, the muse gently nudging one with a cattle prod to the brain. One feels an urgent need to write. Suddenly, there is in one a reservoir of words already aligned in the correct order pushing to escape the pen.

Using a libretto by another, Händel wrote Messiah in just twenty-four days, the notes flowing from his pen like Niagara over the Falls in consistent, peerless order. Similarly, when inspiration strikes one, when one feels that need, the words will not be constrained, and the piece virtually writes itself.

Those are two impetuses that drive me to write — a reason to continue and inspiration’s cattle prod. Neither necessitates a reader’s existence. One could just as well write in one’s journal. But having a reader is nice. One needs feedback, and signs of appreciation are best. But one finds on Medium that that sort of reader participation is rare. The mechanisms are there — claps, highlights, and comment, but few readers are motivated sufficiently to use them. I have many more views for a piece than I have readers clapping, highlighting, or commenting. So, I’d best be content with writing as if for my journal.

There is a third impetus, the desire to communicate, motivate, inform, or influence. That presupposes a reader. Sometimes, it’s what drives me to write.

I dare say anyone who writes on Medium will find himself driven by one of these three forces. She might be someone like Randi Ragan whose first story on Medium, Keeper of the Place, which won over some 10,000 entries in Medium’s latest writing challenge, percolated for years before needing to be written. He might be someone like James Finn who writes articles such as NYC Mayor Pushes Christian “Death to Gays” Pol for City Post to inform and influence minds. Or it might even be me whose story A Four-Year-Old And His Father Before It Got Ugly suddenly one day needed telling.

In response to the Promptly Written Feb. 8th, 2022, writing challenge by Ravyne Hawke, What Drives Me As A Writer?

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