I’m a writer who has spent most of my life running away from being a writer. I’ve actually had some success and even notoriety along the way, but somehow I’ve either gotten distracted (see: men) or gotten too close to the flame (see: fear of success).
Sometimes I scare myself when I look at the world. At other times I become very tired, because to explain what I see is just so hard. At the best of times, I look at the world and feel lucky to be part of it. That’s when I feel I can write. I can remove myself enough to see things clearly, but not so much that my vision darkens and hardens into fear and judgment.
Curiosity about the world is essential to being a writer, whereas I used to think it was all about passing judgment.
I had a writing teacher once who felt that some of us are gifted with defining moments in our lives, and that these were the things worth writing about. His defining moment happened on Iwo Jima when he was a young marine. He had a vision from the trenches, and he kept writing and rewriting this vision his whole life. Being young, I didn’t question this. But now I realize that you could wait your whole life for a defining moment, a big moment, and then squander the rest of it trying to capture it in word. There is no need to wait for anything to happen – its all happening all of the time. It’s the writer’s job to open her eyes to take in what she can and filter it through an honest lens. Then it is easy to see that we are more often defined by the small things, the little choices we make unannounced and unconsidered.
I’m interested in the small things.
I visualize when I read, and it blew my mind to find out that a lot of people don’t.
I’d say the writers I most often turn to these days are Joan Didion (especially her book on California, Where I Was From), and Anne Fadiman, whose collection of essays, At Large and At Small is pure inspiration.
Among my favorite books are EM Forester’s Passage From India and Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady. I like it when heroines are confronted by the consequences of their actions. I read Portrait when I was pretty young; I remember being confounded by the idea that you could make the wrong decision by choosing beauty. I then understood the power a book can have to change your whole world view.
I can be reached at sudari@sbcglobal.net
