The Purpose Behind the Pen

FROM THE ARCHIVES (Daily Nebraskan columns)

The Purpose Behind the Pen

Words Hold Immortal Power

Jeremy Patrick (jhaeman@hotmail.com)

Daily Nebraskan (www.dailyneb.com)

September 11, 2000

"It is part of the social mission of every great newspaper to provide a refuge and a home for the largest possible number of salaried eccentrics."

---Lord Thomson of Fleet

I like to think of myself as a writer, but I'm not.
Although I do a lot of writing - columns, book reviews, essays, articles, and more - I hate every minute of it. Perhaps that's not true: Revising is fine, and I always get a little thrill out of seeing myself in print.
But the actual act of sitting down and writing is plain torture; trying to think of something worth saying, making the proverbial order out of the chaos of thoughts in my head and expressing them in a way worth reading is not something I enjoy.
I envy writers like Dickens or Vonnegut who were constantly overflowing with ideas and could sit down and write for hours on end. I've resolved that if I ever write a book, I'm going to be like Jack London; supposedly, he wrote exactly 500 words a day and often stopped in the middle of a sentence when he reached that number.
I write solely nonfiction, mostly about "current issues." I haven't written fiction since I won the "Budding Young Author" award back in eighth grade for some cheesy sword-and-sorcery story. I realized, recently, that I write nonfiction because it allows me to avoid risks.
The risks aren't contained in what you write about, they are contained in the way you write it. I pick on religion, political groups and college administrators all the time, and it never worries me. I know that I can make the arguments and defend them well. But fiction, on the other hand, troubles me because I have no wall of rationality to stand behind. The ability to make dialogue sound "real," to make plots interesting and to write something truly original are not talents many people have.
Perhaps I'm simply afraid to find out if I have them or not.
I'm not exactly sure why I write. I think part of it is the aforementioned little thrill that it's a little dent in my solipsistic armor to know that others are actually going to read something that I wrote while lying on my little dorm-room bed listening to The Dave Matthews Band.
Part of it, I must admit, is a missionary's zeal for spreading The Truth. Of course, my Truth is not the Word of God, but the Word of Liberalism or Rationalism or what have you; the effect, however, is the same. I sincerely believe that I'm right on most things and therefore, am all too happy to share it with everyone else.
What I really am is a Reader. I read voraciously. All kinds of stuff - comic books, fiction, nonfiction, magazines - are prey for my carnivorous appetite. I think, to at least some degree, my desire to write exists to justify my desire to read. I know that one day I'll be dead and everything I'll have read will not matter a shred; but at least by writing I feel like I'm using that information for a higher purpose.
Giving back, if you'll allow a cliché, to the writers who gave to me. Creating instead of just devouring. In my vainer moments, there is even a tiny hope that some of what I write will live after me - my own little grasp of immortality in a godless universe. Of course, this is the most futile of desires.
Only a tiny percentage of writers achieve fame, and their importance usually dwindles with time. Admittedly, there are some who have lasted centuries, such as Shakespeare or Aristotle, but even the few who have survived are usually not remembered in the way they would have wished: We read Plato's "Republic," but few seriously entertain the notion of philosopher-kings; some students are forced to slog through Dickens' "David Copperfield," but hardly anyone reads it for the purpose it was intended: pleasure. As Twain said, "Classics are the books everyone talks about but nobody reads."
We have returned to the beginning: If I hate writing so much, why do I do it? Unfortunately, the answer still eludes me. Regardless, in the words of Isabel Colegate, "It's not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone with them."