This aspiration is an Ideal composed of Ideas and materialized by definitive words; but in this post-2000 wired world of instant gratification, does the lengthy act of Idealism through Words matter anymore, to bottom lines of multimedia file-sharing, and quick-cut attention spans?
Why, you may wonder, do I romanticize what a Writer does, when she or he plants their behinds solidly on to a chair and remains there...for hours!? They just sit there...the Writers...sitting, but also fluttering those 'magic digits' across key-boards, some on type-writers, or by pen on note-pads, rendering human stories close to their hearts or intellectual obsessions. To render stories through that torrent of reaching words!
Still, these words must arrive together intact, or always remain ephemeral, condemned to the recycling bin of 'almost, but not quite.' Sylvia Plath once said: "Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing." Minus the negative charge, I agree with Plath, that waving Greatness from inside the dark, will never illuminate understanding in the minds of others. One must venture to connect!
Next comes that curious inquiry: "Sooo...you've been writing for an awfully long time now...if you're still...you know...doing it. Just curious...ARE YA DONE YET?" (the impatience of those who don't understand The Process of discovering one's true voice).
"I've got this awesome concept for this awesome novel! I only have to, by my calculations, complete 23 more chapters to tell you the PUNCH-LINE!" (As if it were a joke...no joke, was ever so long in the telling of it).
Yes...writing...writing entire books...the world's longest art-form (if you don't count epic domes in Europe, or the pyramids)...of course, to Writers, the punch-line at the end of "23 chapters completed" is..."REVISION-TIME!" Not much action sitting in one's dream-factory typing away the day, when one actually can, during the demanding press of Life and priorities. Or ON one's dream-factory, referring to that cloud the Writer is sitting on, adrift inside the head that visualizes. That sedentary reality may be so, on a surface consideration. But dip into the Writer's Mind, and one discovers moving worlds of great fiery imagination, arriving in passionate storms! When one isn't grasping for the next connection...
Actually, the Writer's journeys happen before stories are rendered with any light or author's power. This soul-journey is the element we travel through, which can not be bypassed. Dreams remain intangibly internal visions, unless the experiences, the research beforehand, illuminates truthfully, through the details one amasses along the way. Living's in the details...as with creativity, too.
The Writer's senses have necessarily immersed in absorbing and defining their own personal, mythic journey through Life. It is in that distance travelled, where seeds of our inspirations bloom, seeking the breaking light of Completion. Flow as the words go...and go...into fulfilling The Book! Completion is Everything; and Everything flows from disciplined Belief in oneself. What channels forth in those manifest pieces of Writing about living truths, and what is plucked from the creative ear of The Universe, is a private dialogue between a Writer and his or her own Universal Muse.
So what, if brick and mortar bookstores are blinking out of sight? So what, if the publishing industry quakes as forms change shape, shifting the landscape of competetive currencies? So what again, if they said "The Book is Dead!" (Withdrawn...sustained). Or that Readers had stopped picking The Book up physically, to flip covers (although, there are those who never really stopped, and likely, never will)?
So long as Writers Write to channel Dreams and Humanity, Readers will Read receiving The Exchange which completes The Sharing Circle. Round and round, we share in that cultivation of complex emotions and darker challenging notions expressed, regarding our Shared Existence. Shared Dreams. Time to get on with living these things called Experiences, that inform all of these vast stretches of pages. Time to breathe Life into all the sails, sailing Life into and across monumental Words...Worlds...Words. On this Earthly Writer's Exchange.
A new friend of mine recently tweeted me, "I hear ya. So many words, so little Time." Yeah...
The Book is for always! Reading an affecting Book burns imprints into the neural landscape, touching inner lives! The Book is an artistic consolidation of a Writer's humanistic expression, not unlike the emotional capture of Music, or the in-color realization of a visualized painting. A finished Book is nothing short of a spiritual act of fortitudinal Belief in the soul of qualitative Completion! What elevates art into being...Art? The truth of that answer, lies in The Craft of the act, of the sustained Intention!
Art is, transcending all doubters and pessimistic humors, evidence of the Soul in consideration of Existence. This consideration is as visionary as Architecture, possessing the eventual organized clarity of a blue-print. The tenacious and gracious pursuit of an elegant clarity of description, capturing a Pure Essence. Consciously receiving and channelling while expressing...are the actions of a Writer in connection with Great Creativity. The completion of this Art's Exchange, is the reception of a focused and passionate Reader who is open to consider this totality of a Vision in Words. Remembering, Writers...Readers absorb our visions for themselves...projected on to the movie screens of their own interpretive experiences, with a Book's holistic world.
Few precious people will ever invest attention into a Writer-in-progress, until the long distance has culminated with a Story-in-Full. And so, he or she, toiling through the process, must make an initially lonely decision. Craft a long distance endeavor, simply because one's own inner desire to be known and expressed, is the only really powerful reason in beginning it at all! This value is what my old improvisation teacher in the acting program had called, "Saying the things inside that need saying."
Can you see the finish-line on the distant horizon? Examining this Life makes living it, all the more worthwhile, for attaining the gleam of understanding. The Book, with its perfectly rendered journey held waiting for discovery between two covers, is a gift provided by someone else's sustained act of faith; but until that culmination, Writers must always return back to the solitude...the silence of self-validation. Back to The Weaving.
Hopefully you Writers have filled the well! Hopefully you return to your Writing Nooks with renewed trust in your Ideal. In your Muse. As Robert Bly wrote in a different context, but appropriate expression to sum up the distant Writer's Promise (a rough quote from my memory of "Iron John"):
"In the silence...we grow long, long wings!"
I can't honestly say when my Time will allow for another MyIndieBookDiscovery post, much as I value The Resonance of its inclusion. My intention was for these reviews to be less, "reviews," and closer to "Book Portraits," for Indie Author posterity; and qualitative additions to this "Gallery of Indie Author Posterity" will likely return at some "random, future Time," for me to expand on its worthy Circle of Writers. I have always wished to know who my creative peers are...to belong with my own tribe in the grand scheme of a sometimes isolationist endeavor. For now...I simply pause here...and direct my full focus elsewhere. As Cervantes said, so long ago, "Time Ripens Everything."
Now, back to the dedication...back to the Ideal...Back to The Book!
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