Why I Still Write...

Do not whine…

Do not complain.

Work harder.

Spend more time alone.

- Joan Didion

Here I am, staring at the blank page and coming up with another idea for an online piece that will be posted on Vocal with the hope that it will become popular, read widely, maybe even viral. I know that the odds are against me, and yet I still do this. I find a way to sit down and stare down a blank white rectangle that does not care either way if I decide to search for porn or create another poem, essay, list or story (my usual choices). And sometimes I wonder why.

I know that I am an addict. People have noted this about me, but they applaud this particular addiction. “At least it ain’t drugs or alcohol,” some say (never was, despite the obvious attraction and availability on bad days). “As long as you are not chasing every woman you see, like some other people I could name” (thanks mom, grandma, certain aunts and other female relatives). No, no, no. Those were never the vices I succumbed to; they were not the ones that caught me. It was always in the pages of a book that I got my fix.

As a child, we would visit certain relatives and I would be most excited to see them, not for the company or talk, but for their books. I still remember visiting one home of close relations who often made me feel as if I had to be challenged on everything I liked or respected (a big challenge for a little kid). The only reason why I enjoyed going to their home was that they had a collection of the complete works of Dr. Seuss in their basement (no one ever seemed to disturb it, not even their own children). I would take my time to go through “And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street”, “The Cat in the Hat”, “The Lorax” and all the other titles I could name and you would love to hear again. I must have read the complete collection there multiple times on shared nights out, during sleepovers and whenever anyone thought it was a good idea to stop by. And the addiction grew from there.

We had an ancient atlas – it had a recent entry on Newfoundland joining Canada…in 1949 – and a split dictionary that I enjoyed reading. There was no Shakespeare in our house, or anything else that could be considered great literature (some school readers that I am sure my brother abandoned, political literature that gave me a disturbing portrait of my father’s thoughts and beliefs, and some soft romances and pulpy thrillers that were cinder-block thick and mostly unreadable to me). It was the library and school where I discovered the greats, although not always from any authority figure. I read Beckett before Shakespeare because of this, and became a Camus fan because of one chance encounter with his work in a school reader. I knew that all my reading would be an effort of searching, rejecting and accepting (still works that way).

And so was my writing. I really do not understand why I even started. I know that people say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, but I never heard that quoted and thought, yes, that is what I want to do: I want to be a writer because I read… I just could not say it to myself. My stubborn heart and head wanted me to pursue science and math, two subjects I was completely unqualified for as a student. How bad was I? I would doodle on the back of exams while all the others in class did their work. I once wrote out song lyrics for a friend when I should have been completing an assignment due that week (the friend won first prize for our shared effort and thanked me for the work). I once went to a reading and after the author spoke had him autograph…my math book (I did not even have the sense to bring my own notebook or one of his novels; and yes, he smiled and did sign it). It was not something that I could ignore.

And you may wonder about my life now, after all those false starts and my continued scribbling. I teach at a college and for a technical school, with other jobs to come teaching online. All of my work is based on ESL, writing for business and job hunting, media studies – I can tell you what those different occupations are at the end of the film – and other editing work. It is nothing steady and I am in debt, but I love it. And then, I write. By a rough calculation, I can say that I have made less than $3000.00 from my entire writing career (this includes freelancing for a local paper, writing liner notes in translation for a musician, creating my own chapbook of poetry and selling exactly one copy to a friend, writing an album review for the Japan Times – published the day after my birthday; very nice – and my work on Vocal). I would not want to be put on the unemployment rolls with any other skill to my name, besides teaching.

And I should comment on the title. I could not call this piece “Why I Write”. George Orwell made that his and deserved it. I would often refer back to him and his essays and novels and marvel at the man’s output (I have the complete set of novels and all of his collected writing and still have the same deep respect for his work that began as a teenager; also, never read in school). And I also have lists of advice from writers that I keep very close by whenever I find my energies flagging. Only some of us will continue to scribble when rejected (some are sensible enough to get real jobs). And that is why I began this piece with a quote from the great Joan Didion, a woman who’s work I came to only recently, but from whom I intend to learn everything I can. There are better known lines from her work that I could have used, but, as she herself said and did, I am going to put this on an index card and look at it whenever I feel the need for it. And I will end this piece with another set of quotes that will keep me putting my thoughts on the page:

I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

And…

We are the stories we tell ourselves.

These lines contain wisdom and insight that I never knew I needed and also a complete portrait of what keeps me going.

I will keep going.

Thank you for reading!

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

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