A WAY OF LOOKING AT THINGS -- THIS BUSINESS ABOUT A WRITER'S AUDIENCE

A WAY OF LOOKING AT THINGS -- THIS BUSINESS ABOUT A WRITER'S AUDIENCE 

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© October 25, 2012

My good friend William L. Livingston III (I love to write his full name out.  It has a history) asked me who my audience is for a possible OD book. 

I had to smile to myself when I read that.  Of course, that is the first question asked by a publisher considering publishing your work. 

I wonder what it was like when James Fennimore Cooper, Herman Melville, or indeed Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters thought of writing their books.  Did they think in terms of an audience or simply write because something inside them, call it a soul, forced itself to the surface and commanded (could I say demanded) that they write.

As you have heard from me many times before, I believe we are all writers.  But my sense is that the soul seldom reaches from deep inside us and makes this demand. 

My mother, who was a great reader all of her life, I suspect in part because she was terribly hard of hearing, wrote me and said that she thought she would like to write a book.  She asked if I had any thoughts on the subject.

I sent her a writer's guide to organize her thoughts, structure the narrative, develop her dominant themes and determine the denouement. 

She wrote me back, "That is an awful lot of work.  I think I'll stick to reading."

She had soul but not enough punishing soul to command/demand she write. 

Another person asked me one day, "Do you think writers are born or made?"

I answered without hesitation they are born!  

Now, years later, I still think that is true.  I think writing is as much a vocation as is the religious.  Nuns and priests have a calling, and I think writers do as well.

Now, you're going to think I'm hedging my bet when I say I am not necessarily talking about published writers, and if so, you would probably have a point. 

My sister Janice wrote simply beautiful poetry as a girl, but had absolutely no desire to publish.  I've known others gifted people at poetry of the same inclination.

Poetry is different than prose.  It demands intense discipline and economy of expression.  It also can be done in bits and pieces.  This is impossible with prose.

I have several volumes -- more volumes than I've had published -- of prose, both fiction and nonfiction that took years to complete.  For example, "A Green Island in a Black Sea," which is not published, and looks as if it will not be published in my lifetime, has been a forty-year project.  It has commanded several versions (all discarded), except this one.  Were I younger, the South Africa book might have led to several additional versions, absurdly so.

Looking back, it has been a blessing that these many manuscripts have not been published.  On the other hand, do I regret any books or articles that have been published?  No.  What would be the point?

Are some of them naive?  Yes.  Are some of them stupid?  Yes, again.  Do some of them look as if my head was sewed on backwards?  I suspect so.  But given what is out there, I'm glad they exist.  Thank God for cyberspace!

If it is hard to get your mind around the concept that I am stating here, I've never been enamored of golf because it takes too much time and money, whereas tennis can be played quite economically and expediently on a public course. 

My tennis, then, is metaphor for poetry and golf for prose.  Much as I have played tennis I could never say I was a good tennis player, but I have a son who is outstanding in the sport and has made a career and good living as a tennis director. 

Carrying the metaphor further, you may ask if I think I am a good writer.  That is a fair enough question.  My answer is immodest but I think accurate. 

I am a better writer than I was forty years ago, but the mechanics of writing are still a challenge and I think I will expire still not mastering the discipline. 

When I said my answer would be immodest, I have always thought that I am a very good thinker, and have had to get better as a writer to express that ability in words.

Now, what has this to do with the business of an audience?  This may tell you more about me than you care to know. 

My audience has always been myself, nobody else.  It is my attempt to make sense of life, and my life and existence in this current moment of madness, and how to deal with it.  If it resonates with others, all the better.

My daughter and granddaughter visited me yesterday, but had a hard time waking me up at 2:30 in the afternoon to answer the door.  I had been again writing most of the night.

My daughter said, I can't believe how much you write, in e-mails alone it is staggering.  How do you do it?

The better question, I told her, is why do I do it, and the answer brings us back to that soul that is restive and commands or demands attention. 

The sadness I see is that writers worry more about getting publish than what they think and write about.  They skew their words to a receptive audience at the expense of their personal integrity, and what is burning within to be expressed.  I've never suffered that limitation, which I can tell you is quite liberating.

By a peculiar set of circumstances, most of the novels I now read are written by novelists in Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, people who write from a buried soul without conceit like a farmer's wife I know in Iowa with the initials Rita Waage.  She pours out little gems that are priceless.  The subjects?  Everyday life written small, and therefore very large.

Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote about such people as this lady in "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" (1959).  Philosopher George Santayana must have been thinking about her when he wrote:

"Words and images are like shells, no less integral parts of nature than are the substances they cover, but better addressed to the eye and more open to observation."

Be always well,

Jim