High Priest

O have you something to say, say it to me please...
O have you something to say, say it before I leave
- Joe Cocker

The writer puts on the mantle and cloak and assumes the role of the High Priest speaking to the tribe. What the writer says - must be the most important thing they can hear. Otherwise they won't listen. Writing has this one function - to make the world a better place. Our purpose in life - is to make this planet a decent place for all the little children of the world. If we don't do that - with our lives, with our writing - we fail.

The writer must always bear that in mind. Must always be focused on that goal. This is our world, our land, our home. It is what we make it to be - make it better. Please make it better. Soon it will belong to our children. Make it better, make it the best it can be - we owe them.

Great Writing

Cannot be merely personal preference. There must be a standard, a basis for objective judgment, and quantifiable criteria. This matters to me, I am a writer. It matters to us as a society, a culture, a species, because what we know of who we are comes from literature. Great writing must be sublime, excellent, better than.

It must be moving, have significance, and originality. Each is self-evident, essential, and measurable. Together they form the basis for objective judgment. We can quibble over what is a “moving piece of writing” or not. But arguing for the sake of argument is a waste of time.

Great writing needs to move readers to an emotional response. An “okay” reaction won’t cut it; is not sublime. It also must be significant to humanity. Writing about nothing is not important. And there has to be a certain degree of originality because the same old, same old is boring.

Each of these push the reader in a similar direction. Emotion moves us to feel toward something. That is a personal betterment; as are encounters with meaningfulness and originality. Freshness, meaning, feeling, are positive growth; which make us better people, better aware of ourselves and our world. This matters - we are what we read.

What It Takes to Write

A writer is an artist painting words. Don’t tell me of technique, I want technique to come from that. Like Poe said - all the words, each word, make up the story in the telling. Want the words to flow like water, like Blue Grotto in the Alps - fresh and clean and natural - a wonderment of nature, that’s to crave admire and enjoy.

Sure you edit, how not...go back re-read re-work and add delete and fix and change. How not assume that free-flow well of words might need adjusting jousting now to penetrate my ear and soul. Look - you’re asking me, I’m asking you - devote some time of life to read these words. They best be worth it - is a lot to ask. Maybe a lot to give...these words. Just make sure they’re worth it - words that is.

We make the reader worth our words by his own reading them. That’s why we do. To make a sea of change. To change them by infusing them with words. Not show off what we do with paper canvas or a screen. It’s dialectic. Words enter your ear or soul and that’s what you become, transcendent, like a mystic smoke invading through your lungs. You are now what I make you with my meanings and my thoughts. Or turn away, repulse me and my weak attempts to captivate your soul.