On Writing

This past week I completed a 20+odd year journey by finishing The Trivium:

Originally written in A.D. 1937 by Sister Miriam Joseph C.S.C, Ph.D., it contains within its 280-odd pages a complete introduction to a classical education, the sort of education that 150 years ago was likely de rigeur for the student but which now is reserved for post-secondary education and even then only for a very small group of majors.  It has a complete introduction to the concepts of Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric as had been practiced since Classical Greek times until the mid-20th Century.  Perhaps not surprisingly, I cannot recommend it enough.

I can hear what you are thinking:  "TB, you read anywhere between 80 and 120 books a year.  How is it that it took you two decades to finish a book - and how do you know that it took that long?"

The answer to the second question is simply I remember this book because this was the first online order that I and my mother did together, to show her how easy it was to make an online order.  The answer to the first is that between the nature of the material (which I did not want to rush) and the reverence for this particular book because of its history, it was always something I was going to do "someday".  Until someday arrived in the form of a move halfway across the country.

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In the very last chapter of the book the authoress discuss "Composition and Reading".  The "Composition" portion consists mostly information about poetry and metrical rhyme (much of which I had forgotten; we are far poorer for an educational system that is only STEM and "modern day" based) with a very small section at the end about all other kinds of writing.  Within that very small section, she discusses the Essay with this brief introduction:  "An essay can be broadly defined as a short prose work on a single topic."

A light went on for me.  That is what you write, the light said.  You are an essayist.

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Writing - this blog, journaling, even trying my hand at longer works - has been something which, over time, seems to have developed almost accidentally into how I write.  Longer-term readers may recall a time when I agonized over my "voice" as a writer as the favorite writers I have all have one, something so recognizable that in reading their works, you know that it is "theirs".  I no longer have that particular concern:  I write the way I do now, a combination of practice and repetition and what has become an online presence where I am perhaps in some ways more "myself" than I am in the real world.

One of the goals I set for myself is to be "as honest as I can be".  That may sound like prevarication to some, an easy way out when I do not wish to address a topic. I have never interpreted it that way at all; instead, I write to be as honest as I can be about myself and my life as I cannot speak fully or credibly for the lives of others: those are their stories to tell.  And while I may tell some things I may not tell everything; in this I use the model of Rod Dreher, who steadfastly has refused to write about his divorce by simply saying that he had an online outlet and his ex-wife did not and therefore it was wrong to write about something where the individual was not involved nor had the ability to defend themselves.

It was in this combination of the "Aha" moment and reflecting on my style that the Anais Nin quote struck me.

Writing is, in a sense, "easy" for me.  I have kept a journal for almost forty years; writing about my feelings and thoughts freely is something that I have come to do naturally.  My ability to speak the same is not nearly so well developed.  Call it a sense of self consciousness, call it embarrassment, call it a reluctance to confront things in the moment:  I am far more verbose on the page than I ever am in real life.

Can I speak?  Certainly?  Do I have the talent of being the proverbial Raconteur, spinning a yarn that entertains and educates?  I do, and have often used it to effect in my career.  But it is not my preferred communication tool.  That is performing; writing is communication.

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Writing over the past few months has been a challenge, compounded by a new schedule and settling in to a new location (still) and in a way, finding things to write about.  My life is in flux in a way that I had not anticipated and to be frank, sometimes I find my writing to be far more dead than I would like it to be or repetitious in form and scope.  Some of that is how I have chosen to structure this blog in terms of days; some of that is simply the period I find myself in.

But realizing that I have a both a voice/style and a preferred presentation of writing - an essay - has been a relieving factor.  One, it simply confirms that which I have come to do and in that sense - in my own mind - makes it "acceptable"; there is not necessarily a need to "find" a new or novel thing to try except as a writing experiment.  Two, it means that within that form, the fact that I write as I do - "as honest as I can be" - comports with the idea that a writer writes less those things that they can say rather than the things they cannot say.

It makes me laugh - a bit - it took me over twenty years to find that single line in a book I owned all that time. On the other hand, it makes me smile to realize that, probably to my mother, she has a smile on her face now knowing that the book she bought for me had that line.