last night, the professor said that serious writing has nothing to do with the writer, that the only thing that matters is the reader. i can agree that novice writers write, to an extent, for themselves. they may not know why they write, and it may be the last of their concerns, but they do and feel they need to for themselves. 
personally, my writing is (and use to be more) self-indulgent - in the sense that it is vague, evasive and details are placed because they are a personal attachment to a past that is never explained in my writing. for example, a dreamer may wake up at seven. why seven? she may touch her face having felt snow sliding down her cheek, only to be surprised that it is her own tears and that she is lying on a bed where snow can't fall into. why snow? why tears instead of snow? why the two mentions at once? perhaps she wakes abruptly, paralyzed with fear that she is entrapped in a net. why a net? and then, she discovers she is resting in a hammock, but does not remember why or how she got there. why a hammock? why the absence of memory? these are all choices and these are also all chances that a writer takes.
personally, my writing is (and use to be more) self-indulgent - in the sense that it is vague, evasive and details are placed because they are a personal attachment to a past that is never explained in my writing. for example, a dreamer may wake up at seven. why seven? she may touch her face having felt snow sliding down her cheek, only to be surprised that it is her own tears and that she is lying on a bed where snow can't fall into. why snow? why tears instead of snow? why the two mentions at once? perhaps she wakes abruptly, paralyzed with fear that she is entrapped in a net. why a net? and then, she discovers she is resting in a hammock, but does not remember why or how she got there. why a hammock? why the absence of memory? these are all choices and these are also all chances that a writer takes. 
details come to me not after consideration but because details are the only thing that comes to me when i think. details (the number seven, snow in the morning, a hammock...) are what comes before the scene of memory. perhaps it is not the moment i invent, but the moment which presents me with the chance to exaggerate upon a memory. this could be what makes me a beginning author, sure. but even after development, i hope i never have to write for the reader alone. i hope i always write because the act of literature should be a dialogue, a moment when time is being shared and experience exchanged. this is where i think authors fall short: they write having found a story to tell, a story that will seduce a reader, that will charm, that will suspend disbelief, but they write driven by the story and they forget completely that they must live as the character, they must feel the choices the characters have to decide upon that shape the story, they must be within the interior. <
the most antagonizing feeling as a reader is when you feel for or feel before the character does. authors shy away from the commitment to becoming the life in which they create. they forget the interior city (the nerves, the pulses, the digressions, the fragments, the spaces in between rising and falling actions, the pulse of the event) and they become too focused on the exterior city. why can't authors be, at the very least, encouraged to write within a life; instead of writing on a life?
i want to write a novel where the the character's body falls open and exposes the hidden manifestations of a life that is internalized, what those removed from us cannot see. and then, when i want to see a life, when i want to watch a story be told i will either go outside and travel the streets or i will turn on my television.
the most antagonizing feeling as a reader is when you feel for or feel before the character does. authors shy away from the commitment to becoming the life in which they create. they forget the interior city (the nerves, the pulses, the digressions, the fragments, the spaces in between rising and falling actions, the pulse of the event) and they become too focused on the exterior city. why can't authors be, at the very least, encouraged to write within a life; instead of writing on a life?
i want to write a novel where the the character's body falls open and exposes the hidden manifestations of a life that is internalized, what those removed from us cannot see. and then, when i want to see a life, when i want to watch a story be told i will either go outside and travel the streets or i will turn on my television. - Importantly, I want to stop falling back on myself to write within. I want my main focus to be another's life so separate from my own imaginings. A few days ago I read some comment that someone had written me a few years back. Of course, the few criticisms will stand out from the praise. And maybe that is something to be thankful for. The comment was along the lines of thinking "my personal philosophy" was being the beautiful face sitting beside a window at a cafe, staring out into the world, while others walked by trying to look into who I was. She went on to say that I analyzed that behavior and that struggle. Then she went on to assume that I lived off my parents financially and that I should think about getting a job, struggling and falling into the city. When I read this comment/criticism/advice a few days ago, it did sting a bit. There were the small reasons, like she was devaluing struggles that did not mirror the "I eat a few times a week-live in the park-trying to find an apartment where I can sleep on the floor with five other people". I do think there is something genuine and not artificial in struggles that are small but that plague an individual for a lifetime, stunt their growth, inhibit them. But that was not really where the comment stung. It stung because I was born into a life that has been to my advantage, I have had to create struggles, find challenges that were not imposed upon me. And because of that I worry all the time that I have no story to tell. Friends laugh at me and want to slap me around every time I say such things - claiming that I, too, am discrediting my own past. Last year in a conference with a professor, she told me she believed I was avoiding my story - that I was avoiding feeling what my life is overwhelmed by (trite or not, it is real). I am sure there is more truth in all those possibilities, than not. But overall, I just want to get away from myself. I want to be in situations where I am not given a choice. I want to live another's life, so I can forget any importance or pressure of telling my own. Dream? To graduate, the summer of 09' go back to Africa and "help" the underprivileged children. I want to experience not having a choice about food, when you eat, what you eat, how much you eat. I want to see a child cry for food with the hope that I will never, ever think about pushing away food. So I can feel sick about ever choosing to say no to certain foods, to starve, to look disadvantaged. And then, I want to write about that, about them, about me after them.
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