TheBanyanTree: On the Craft

[Maria Gibson]

You have been outed.  Sure, you said the things many of us have said 
when we first began testing the paper or screen waters.  I'm not a 
'real' writer, you whispered lest you scare some scrap of talent away 
never to return.  Denial works that way, Bub, don't kid a kidder.  I 
used to whisper it to myself and shout it to others but the writing just 
kept on going and one day I had to admit that for better or worse, I am 
a writer.  And so are you.

Bring on your reasons, I know you have a lot of them.  You don't follow 
the rules, you aren't trained, it doesn't look someone else's style or 
stuff.  Well, thank God, thank God and thank God.  I don't follow a lot 
of rules, in fact I have a wicked and sordid love affair with runon 
sentences but that doesn't stop me.  Life trained me as well as it has 
trained you and there is pride to be taken for not being mistaken for 
anyone else.  Being real takes guts which may result in their 
unceremonial splat on the windshield of life but at least it becomes 
something you own and can claim.  I'd rather own my own splat than 
babysit someone else's brass ring.

It comes from the same place humor comes, this love and drive to express 
with words.  It is borne without fanfare.  Its parents are pain and 
heartache, life's experiences.  Those are the moments that made you look 
deeply inward and count the cells of your soul when it was being crushed 
and you wondered if there was a ladder going up to match the greased 
slide going down.  Putting those thoughts to work for you by arranging 
them in your own creative way will help you grab at salvation one rung 
at a time.  The ride on the slide...that's easy; don't do what's easy.

It doesn't have to be perfect but I promise, it gets better with time.  
The only way to do it is to do it and it's that simple.  Do it for 
yourself and then share it.  For that piece of you, that person who 
wakes up thinking of phrases and thoughts which could become whole 
projects, the necter of another's appreciation of your effort is 
ambrosia.  In the moment of their enjoyment breathing stops, hearts 
don't need to beat blood and nothing else matters.  Life as you know it 
will never be the same once your reader begins to feel life in their 
veins and it was you who put it there.


It's addictive.  I should know, I'm a writer.  And I recognize you.

Maria