Imagination — Beyond Blue Skies

There is a chasm of differences between believing oneself a writer and knowing how to write.

Writing. This is not a tutorial.

I have vainly convinced myself I felt things other writers had yet to discover, and in my quest to knock on the hallowed doors of publication, suffered the highs and lows of those two extremities. In reality, writing is, of course, a discipline. I cannot hope to write a book using a pre-conceived notion that I have something unique to say. The fact is, there is nothing new to say anymore, only new ways to say old things.

If I think I have a new idea, a little research will satisfy me I have not got a new idea at all. What I may have, and what I believe will carry me through, is a notion that I can write it with a unique and distinct voice. If I did not think this. I would seek to discover another life’s discipline.

I write about my experiences, and those experiences, adequately documented, are then twisted and set down with a desire to entertain. These experiences are complex. These experiences are about the world as I perceive it. But what if the way I perceive the world, explain the world, think about the world is not the way anyone reading my work recognizes this world? What if they misunderstand?

If only you knew how indifferent I am to all that now. It’s two years since I finished a story. Two years.

Writing is about discipline.

The writing gods never came for me. I have a terrible aptitude for learning. I once had a ferocious need to learn. I was so greedy to absorb every thing I could. To the extent, I became a military pilot. Flying, too, is a discipline.

So what happened?

I’ll tell you. Imagination happened.

Everywhere in life, there are climbers. Climbers in school life, climbers in university life, and climbers in business life.

Having left a herd of rough boys, I quickly learned to change my wild boy nature to one with an angelic countenance. It was made up. It was dishonest. It was an imaginative lie. It fooled people into liking me, and when a rough boy learns the lesson of escape and desires that long freedom, well, it means keeping a kind countenance. I became skilled at it. I knew to study and ingratiate myself with the teachers and other learners. I built my life on discipline. Black and white. There are no shades of gray approaching a specified target at Mach 1. There is no imagination required. There is no beauty. No conversation going on in my head. I’m flying through black and white, beyond the blue.

My experiences are about the world as I perceive it.

Meaning, they cannot be believed. It becomes fiction. The more I learn, the more I understand that having left certain beliefs behind, I’m able to read more critically, listen more carefully, and educate myself in the murky depths of what is acceptable, if not perfect, grammar.

Who is writing?

I constantly listen to my voice and try to speak to the reader in that voice. Which is why, as I move among the nouns and verbs, pricking at adverbs, dodging clichés, and striking down adjectives, I listen more and more to the voice that is asking me: Is this the best it can be? If I am knocking at the hallowed door with impoverished work. It will not open.

I will find my voice. The door will open; query-by-query, wonder-by-wonder, the source of knowledge will be tapped into and absorbed. Perhaps that opening will be preceded by a thin, wavering crack of hope, but to open wide, I must have given something of myself to the art. I must provide the determination to learn something every day. I must be respectful of advice. I must listen intently to criticism and value it accordingly. I cannot go backward and remain true to myself.

I began writing as an investigation on how to turn silence into words. Maybe at four in the morning, perhaps all summer long.

That’s where I’m at. Turning silence into words.