In Her Own Write
Where I Get My Ideas Many of the friends that read my column say, “How do you ever think of these things and write about them?” and “Where do you get your ideas for writing?” I’ve asked the same questions of people like Wendy Wasserstein and David Sedaris as they signed copies of their plays and books. The questions don’t have a consistent answer because each and every “creator” has their own way of arriving at the answer and producing a work of art. I certainly don’t have any definite answers to these questions but I do have a story. Several years ago my daughter and I received digital cameras, and we began taking walks around Oberlin to see what we could capture on film. During these walks, we’d talk about things – the subject matter varied from the sublime to the ridiculous. We would often pause our conversations when we’d happen upon something that caught our eye. Oftentimes we would see the same subject matter, but we’d choose to photograph it in a totally different way. Allison was fascinated with architecture, while I pointed my lens at a myriad of benches. The smallest things were captured during our walks, buckeyes coming out of their prickly shells, a decaying leaf disappearing into the sidewalk, the tiniest wing on the tiniest bug, and one shoe left by the side of the road. With each walk we took, we learned to see more of the beauty we had passed only days before. We got up early to catch the light, and we pushed our cameras beyond dusk until even our spare batteries ran out. And we talked. I gave advice. She gave advice. Sometimes we didn’t like what was given and sometimes it saved our lives. The journey we took to photograph the beauty of Oberlin and Lorain County turned into something else. We shared more than our love of photography. The changing seasons couldn’t stop us. We burned stacks of CD’s with images of ice-crusted branches, melting snowmen and frozen tombstones. Allison even photographed the elusive albino squirrel that haunts Oberlin, precariously balanced on our winter bird feeder. Spring arrived and we scrunched over the signs of life pushing through the soil. And all the while we walked and talked. We opened each other’s eyes to overlooked beauty. Allison and I now have new jobs. Hers is in another city. We’ve had to limit our walks, but the talks continue. We carry our cameras with us in hopes of discovering hidden beauty. It is everywhere, just like ideas for plays and books and newspaper columns. As a society, we do SEE a lot. WE HEAR a lot. But a lot of the “wondering” is gone. We need to ask questions and reflect on the answers. The “What if…” needs to be dusted off and used, written and spoken about, campaigned and voted for, preserved and handed down. We need a little less rushing and a little more slowing down. | WHY I WRITEThoughts from South African playwrightsI write because: maybe I'll earn enough money to pay the rent one day? maybe I'm helping other people earn the rent today? maybe I've actually got something to say? maybe I just can't help it. – Peter Krummeck *** Why I write? The question is almost a nothing. It’s like asking: why do you eat or sleep or have sex when you already have children? Why I write is an idea that defies analysis and opinion. It just is. There are a few things I might be good at, a few things I might have become, but becoming a writer was not about choice. It is like being born an Albino or being born blind, or being born beautiful-beyond-all-telling: it’s a thing I simply live with and around and in. One other thing I can think to say about why I write: it is one of the few things in life that is both itch and scratch. – Karin Schimke *** At school, they told me I wrote well. Overweight and too shy for sport, I clung to what I felt comfortable with. Nearly a quarter of a century later, I’m still clinging. And for some reason, I get paid to do it. The best thing about it? I feel cool for the first time in my life. – Beth Cooper *** I write because it allows me access to my higher, better self. There’s much more order and much more chaos in writing than the mediocrity of everyday life allows. Good writers give us a taste of total perfection and extreme fear. Writing brings the human condition out of lethargy. – Elsibe Loubser-McGuffog *** I write to quiet the traffic in my head. I write so I can actually sleep when I finally fall into bed! I write to be honest with myself and with you – which if I say out loud is not always easy to do. – Malika Ndlovu *** I write because I am a writer. I am better with words on a page than words spoken out loud. I am more honest, more creative, more loving, more critical and more me when I write. – Karen Jeynes *** I write because, like being able to tell a good joke, there's a satisfaction in spinning out a story that can hook people. I write to be read (or in the case of the scripts for our animated show, URBO: The Adventures of Pax Afrika, to be watched). I write because I can, because I have to, because by some happy miracle people are prepared to pay me to do so. I write to get better at writing. – Lauren Beukes *** I write because I have no choice, everything that happens in my life gets flushed into words. I write because I have complete confidence that I can - a very wonderful gift to have been given. – Erica Glyn-Jones *** I write because it takes the itch away. I write because it makes the voices and words that live within me tangible. I write because if it stays inside, I may explode. – Ilana Wetzler *** I write because: I want to explore what's in my mind and why; why other people see the universe the way they do, and why their perceptions differ (to greater or lesser degrees) from mine. I want to experience the universe in its ineffable existence, without mediation, without evaluation; as pure perception, as bliss consciousness. I want to realize the all-encompassing nature of existence, the fluidity of the dimensions of time, the end to the mythical separateness of 'me' from 'you', from the bamboo at the bottom of the garden, from the rocks in the roots of the willow, from the restaurant at the end of the universe! That's the long answer. The short answer is: its my way of joining the cosmic dance. – Dave Wheeler *** WHY DO I WRITE? Because I enjoy the power that words have to communicate – to educate and inform, to move emotionally, to stir into action, to express oneself. Because I enjoy getting the expression of thoughts and feelings 'just right' in the best and most appropriate language, constructed intelligently and pleasingly. Because I am in love with words! – Yvonne Hart *** I write to draw lines in the sand and cross them, all in one sentence. I write two words on my palms only to read them reflected in your gaze when we both remember to listen. I write to remind myself that I am more body than my breasts; that there is more woman to me than just mother. I write too much of the fever and too little of the snow. I write toward freedom even if I bind myself to every stroke of my pen. – Lucille Greef *** I write because I'm an addict! I switch on my computer about 7.30 am and it stays on until I go to bed and I write every spare moment I have. I'd rather be writing than doing anything else and now all our kids are out of the house, I have decided to indulge myself and do what I like. I used to waste my life cooking and baking and even making puddings...no more! I've always got at least three stories on the go in various stages, or a serial, and my ever-expanding Ideas file is about 30 pages long so I'll probably never get back to all that housewife stuff any time soon. Probably never. Poor Pete!! – Ginny Swart *** I write because I was the youngest of five opinionated children and I WANT SOMEONE TO LISTEN. – Helen Brain *** To create something out of nothing. – Steven Pillemer *** I write because, as Terry Pratchett says, it's the most fun one can have by oneself. The fact that I have to quote another author in order to explain my need to write, of course, does not bode well. Oh, and I have to write because if I didn't I would explode, drenching everyone in my immediate vicinity in a mess of guts, anecdotes, opinions, spleen, analogies, blood, metaphors, personification, split infinitives and mucus. Which would not be pretty. I suspect I need to write more horror to get the above out of my system. – Kathy Hofmeyr *** I don't know why I write. My best guess is that in a previous incarnation I was illiterate, and was hell-bent on improving the situation the next time round. It is equally plausible that I am channelling signals from an extraterrestrial spirit guide whom I haven't met in person, but is supremely important in guiding me from one blunder to the next. Perhaps I am writing in an unconscious attempt to express all the pathological traits in my psyche that I don't understand. I have well-informed friends who tell me that my work reveals my sexual obsessions, my infantile attempts to utter the unnamable, and a doomed but pathetic desire to win affection from an indifferent public. The fact of the matter is that I don't know why I write. I write about people who don't know why they do things. Many writers do this, excluding those who follow Hollywood formulae that insist on clearly signposted motives every time their characters scratch their noses. I know why I scratch my nose (because it's itchy), or why I tie my shoelaces (to keep my shoes on), or why I set the burglar alarm. So why would I write about people who don't understand their own actions if I understood mine in the first place? What I really don't understand is this: why do people ask me why I write? I suspect it's because they're not asking me what I write. Maybe they haven't read it, who knows? – Ken Barris *** Because something happens in the passage from brain to fingers to paper / keyboard that makes whatever comes out infinitely clearer than when it was jumbled up in my head. It's like bouncing off a friend or shrink, only more private and cheaper. – Kerrin Kokot *** hmm ... okay, because you ask so nicely: (... and there's a reason, right there) because it turned out that becoming an astronaut was not going to be either possible or very interesting. – Henrietta Rose-Innes *** I write because otherwise all those thoughts would be trapped in my head. I write because it slows my thinking down to a tolerable and more useful pace I write because it makes more sense than talking into the wind I write because every now and again I find something I wrote at an earlier time and place – and I am astounded! Not regularly, but often enough to make it worthwhile. – Tess Fairweather *** |
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