Here’s a little blatant self promotion.
If you are in the Boise area, next Thursday, the 5th of August, I am going to have my first Author Reading: “Notes from the Writer’s Den”
When: Thursday August 5th, 2010
Time: 7pm (please be prompt as the reading should only be about 30 minutes long.)
Where: Alaska building, 1020 Main St., Boise, ID, 83730, 2nd floor, room 270
Somebody asked me what I do.
“What do you do?” They drew out the question lengthwise as they asked.
I know the implication of the question, what do I do for work. How do I define myself. Work is the thing that is supposed to define my life. However, this idea, that the actions we take to make money defines who we ‘are’, needs some…tweaking. I think more people ‘do’ something different than the job they hold. I don’t think the work we do defines us anymore.
Back in the day, who you were was evident by a persons very name. Baker, maker of bread; Taylor, maker of clothes; Fletcher, maker of arrows; Webb, a weaver. Then, you didn’t have to ask ‘what do you do’, all you had to do was ask a persons surname and it was evident.
Times have changed.
I work at a library. That does not define me. I do like books and words and all things related to the book, but I’m not a librarian, it isn’t who I am. I have bills to pay and this is one job that doesn’t seem to stifle my soul.
I do fall back on this when asked what I do, I reply, “I work at the library.”
I am not ashamed of being a writer, it’s just that being a writer comes with insecurities. I could go on for days and bore you with how writers all over, all through time, have dealt with demons and insecurities. Writer’s are known to spend hours putting pen to page and creating some of the most awe inspiring work around; and yet if you got one of those writers in person to talk to you, you would find out that they think their work crap, worthless. I could go create an entire blog on writers and their insecurities alone, but I don’t want to. So lets just say, I don’t often answer the question, ‘what do you do’ with the answer ‘I’m a writer.’
This time though, I did answer that way. Shoulders back, only a little waver in my voice, “I’m a writer.” I announced.
“Oh.” Was the uninterested answer.
The thing is, admitting I’m a writer is a big deal, I don’t do that very often.
I am not JUST a writer, even that statement is simplistic in meaning. So what am I then?
I am an entertainer, a keeper of stories that have been shared with me, I am a collage artist, I am a researcher, I am an risk taker, I am a framer of acceptance letters, I am a collector of rejection notes, a typist, I am a dreamer. I am just one more in the long line of storytellers that will not quit until I have left my mark on the world in the form of stories.
I, am a writer.
As this ol blog here is in the position of ‘becoming’ I wonder how much of my random daily thoughts should be shared with the faceless world that might read it. I am a fan of droning on and on only when it’s my sister I’m talking to, (maybe a few friends as well). Then again, a blog is a self glorified thing, isn’t it? It’s a sort of free therapy, it’s Facebook, Myspace, and twitter without the constant updating. I’m trying to add two stories, thoughts, history lessons a week to The Writing Moose. Yet, I am at a crossroads. You see, I raged against getting a cell phone, I was not in the first wave of those who got cell phones, I think I was in the 21st wave really. I didn’t like the idea of it, I didn’t like that it took away the intimacy of cradling a phone next to your ear while you sit on a comfortable space in your own home and take the time to talk to someone. I also was angry about email for the longest time. I am a lover of words, of paper, of ink. When you sit down to write a letter to a friend you’ve known since second grade, there is just something so wonderful about taking time, stopping the mad twirl of the earth around you and collecting your thoughts to share them with a friend. I still share a few letters every year with a select few, I miss that process so much. Hemingway was a great letter writer, he corresponded with hundreds of people, it’s said he wrote over 8,000 letters in his lifetime. He would spend half of his morning answering letters, writing letters, and in that action, it was a way to gather his thoughts I suppose, to ready himself for writing.
I am an iconoclastic romantic. I am still not certain if the two go together, but here I am. In love with a historical world we are so quickly leaving behind, not as eager as others to embrace the future technology, but today I find myself thinking that perhaps this, this blog, these tweets, these Facebooks, are just the 21st century equivalent of Virginia Woolf’s room of one’s own. I wonder if Hemingway would have embraced email, and if he did, would his letters have been so well thought out, so intimate, so vast.
Allora, for my one fan out there, so that I don’t feel I’ve gipped you in any way as you read my well written ramblings, here’s a strange fact for you. “More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.” (United Nation’s Research Institute for Social Development.)
The Writing Moose 