Jamey Nell: On the State of Poetry and Instant Gratification
I am not known by many—and I am not known for much of anything—in this fast-paced and exhibition-laced lifestyle that has swept across our wilting world in the past decade. I do not compete in the ‘Multinational Olympic Quest for Fame’, and I believe that too many unworthy individuals view themselves as far too worthy, via the attention they've received through social media outlets. Especially in the world of poetry; a foul monster in the form of ‘instant gratification’ has taken hold, with Instagram being the most prolific offending platform for the degradation of a once-respectable art. As a crucial component in the downfall of critical thinking, exploration of emotions, social connection, and the imaginative manipulation of words is slowly degrading the foundation of the art forms. Instagram has been a hyper-stimulant for the misunderstanding of what poetry truly means, and for the delusion that a written piece need only to express some type of emotion to be considered art. It is not unfounded to fear that future generations will never be exposed to ‘real’ poetry that has been written with integrity and obsessive self-criticism, if we are to continue on this way.
I find it perfectly acceptable to assume that our predecessors in this field would be saddened, dismayed, ashamed, and angry at the state of their beloved art, had they a chance to view what it has become; the argument that “times have changed, and so has writing,” only holds a slight of truth. As years go by and technology continues to grow at an ever-quickening pace, it becomes easier and easier to blame shallowness on the state of social connectedness—or lack thereof—in our society. The problem with this argument is that poetry is not based upon access to information or access to people, but upon access to one's ability to question, observe, describe, compare, dream, and imagine, et cetera. Those who continually write one to three lines—or traditionally, a stanza—solely on the subject of heartbreak, have completely missed the point of being given the gift of words. I would even venture to say that many of the people who commit this offence, are simply capitalizing on the popularity of the #poetrycommunity on Instagram, and do not innately possess said gift of words at all.
With that being said, it is very possible to write a short poem that expresses a tantalizing thought or concept, thus, initiating within the reader, the ability to think and to delve into their own soul. However, the issue arises when these pieces are the foundation of your body of work. Issue with this type of writing also occur when these small blurbs do not invoke any thought process further than the actual words that are written If you aren't implying more than the actual words on the page, or you are not touching upon an important subject with imagery that is beyond the subject itself, then you are not writing poetry, but, instead, are writing simple, unarticulated thoughts. An even larger issue, and the most infuriating of all, is the voracity with which the general public consumes this drivel. It has become a favorable fallback when one is feeling uninspired; to write about the beauty or strength of women, especially using ‘she’ poetry—a widespread joke among true poets in the community. The ‘she’ figure is a public favorite because everyone wishes to become her i.e. her flaws are always beautiful. Sadly, in real-life, flaws are sometimes ugly, and everything about ‘her’ can be twisted into the hopeful uprising of a wayward heart. ‘She’ is very much like a lost, but endearing puppy, and we love to love her for it. But where is the uprising against current global affairs? The state of our dying Earth? Race relations in America? Drug addiction? Childhood trauma and abuse? And yes, heartbreak, or true love?
Very few, it seems, are able to touch upon any of the aforementioned subjects, because they require thought and aesthetic competence, and not just ‘feeling’. They require looking outside of oneself, and they challenge the writer to make everyday things beautiful, and interesting, and relatable, not simply benign butterflies in the stomachs of adolescents. These subjects ask the author to give a voice of importance to the mundane, and to look beyond the one thing that ties us all together as humans and that lends itself so fluently to written word—and that is love. In all of this rambling—likewise with criticism, loathing, harshness—I find pebbles in the creases of my own shoes from this road that I began walking one year ago. I find remnants of the childlike wonderments I used to pen down so fervidly at the same time that the trees were decorating my path with their own fears, and stories, and lessons, and I remember that it is this that I bow to. It is peace, and honesty, and acceptance that guides me, and I am forced to let my grievances go.
Poetry has been beaten to a bloody pulp through the ever-growing avenues of easy internet access that we now possess. I was once a scrabbling stranger, too, but no longer. I aspire to devote my words the maturity they deserve, and I like to think that maturity has lent itself to me, as a person. Despite the uncertain future of poetry in this generation and the ones that follow, I dance with the ghost of what once was, and I keep my pebbles as a reminder of what can grow.
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For something a little more light-hearted, and a lot less critical, follow me on Instagram at @jameynell.poetry. I promise, I'm much friendlier and more laid-back than this rant would lead one to believe. Some might even venture to call me funny. Shoutout, as well, to my favorite poets, @workinprogess13, @alan_melancholic, and @owen_lindley, show them some support, if you so politely please!
Love to you all - and go make your dreams come true.
❤ Jamey Nell
Jamey is a mother, first and foremost, who enjoys nothing more than spending quality time playing Checkers and Battleship with her son, while hiking together on weekends. During weekdays, she is a preschool teacher at a transitional housing facility, working with homeless and at-risk children and families to forge a strong foundation on which they can build a brighter future. This essay is Jamey's first literary venture outside of her Instagram profile, and she plans to develop her skills as time goes on, with the dream of publishing a collection of poetry in the future. You can visit her Instagram page to view her content at @jameynell.poetry.
Alan Doll: On Loneliness
Charles Bukowski lived and wrote in a very different world from the one we do now. His words took weeks, months, years, if ever they did, to see the light of day. Now, in this awful fucking era, I can write anything I want and publish it for all the world to see via social media. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or not; there is no modern filter. My thoughts become words, become public domain, instantly, and with very little recourse by comparison to his day. The same can be said for Sylvia Plath or Amy Lowell, two more champions of the same lonely grit, survived by the timeless, dark words they left behind. What I’m getting at, is that while I feel a sort of kinship with my heroes, though never daring to put myself on their same level (far from it), we share a similar driving essence. However, it remains fundamentally different.
Loneliness, the age-old muse, is perverted in our current time. It has become mutated; quickened by the exponential speed of change, and tempered into a form un-felt by previous generations. Even the very weight of the word itself has lost its gravity. Feeling lonely? Hop online! The world, the promise of instant camaraderie, is at your fingertips…Fear not the dark of night, for we have conquered at long last and brought forth everlasting light. Or something, whatever.
Have we though? While we’ve created undeniably better tools for communication, we seem to suffer an even greater collective poverty, while sharing (or vomiting rather) our opinions, sorrows and hopes in the modern melting pot via status updates, selfies and tweets (and whatever else). We’ve cheapened connection to one another with such irony, I find it hard to describe sitting here right now, typing on the very tool I could use to message, call, email, post, etc. any number of friends (or strangers) from all over the world. Still, here and now, I am alone, writing about being lonely. Here you are, presumably alone, reading some bullshit written by some asshole about being alone and lonely in a great big superfluous world full of people….all lonely and all alone. What a crock, huh? “So it goes.” proclaimed Vonnegut, and he couldn’t have been more right on, when he substituted those three words for “fuck it”. Entire religions, philosophies, schools of thought, what-fucking-have-you have borne this problem for centuries. Buddhism will tell you we are all one. Science will tell you we’re all made up of the same shit. Someone, somewhere told us that we’re all stardust, then David Bowie made it seem really fucking cool. And so we are…so why don’t we feel like it? Why does the dark, murky ether of loneliness seem to permeate into, and out from, the souls of every respected writer, artist, musician or anyone expressing a public opinion on the human condition. Why goddamn it, WHY?
As a child, just beginning to discover the new, vast capacity of my own mind, I very soon became aware of my ability to completely disconnect from reality. From my own sense of self, was I able to just “tune out”, usually in response to some traumatic experience, or just any self-inflicted feeling I was unequipped for. As a child, that was just about everything: tune out. I would hurt myself just to feel in excess; a terrible, pitiful place I would go sometimes and stay as long as I could. I still do it. It would seem I’ve always preferred the limitless autonomy of dreams in contrast to this drab reality. Nothing was new or wonderful in youth, but rather volatile and terrifying for the most part. I was born without certain quintessential filters of vision (I do not mean ocular, literal vision), and that lack has never been a blessing, but a curse. Religion didn’t make sense to me, sports and useless games didn’t seem fun. under the guise of courtesy, all the polite lies, we tell each other (and ourselves) only served to alienate and confuse me. I realized very young, that I just didn’t fit into the mold.
Now, as an adult, I’ve learned to embrace my vagabond status, or to try at least. I know everyone feels “somehow different”... I truly believe I am. I seem to be at odds, constantly, with everything, everyone, everywhere. I have nothing but complete contempt for mankind and all the silly fucking games we insist hold some dumb importance. I’m not sold, I don’t want any part, and If I could, I’d go live in a fucking tree house somewhere and defect completely. Still, however, I don’t.
Loneliness seems to insist that one still, regardless of its isolating nature, seek reconciliation from others. It tells me that one day, if I hold out long enough, I’ll find someone that feels like I do, and who understands me. Someone who forgives all my blatant contrast to the normality I feel surrounded by, the mediocrity this prison force feeds you. That probably won’t happen. I think all anyone ever really wants in life is to be truly understood by another.
I’ve never been able to narrow down why, exactly, I don’t feel understood and hence unavoidably lonely. Even now, as I write this, I find it difficult to express myself fully, to put words to the thoughts and feelings I’ve never cared to explain before. It’s infected almost every ounce and facet of my being, from the music I’ve written over the years, to the poetry I write now, and the way I relate to others (or don’t) on a daily basis.
Certainly, others feel as put-out by politics as I do. Its an obvious, bullshit game, disinterested with the needs of the constituent public it was designed to represent.
Certainly, others feel as though the perfect romantic picture painted by (some, most?) movies and literature is as silly as it really is. We all know that when the honeymoon wears off, relationships are like holding down a job, sometimes the work is hard, the pay sucks, and someone is constantly mad at you.
Certainly, we all know that fame and fortune is nothing it’s cracked up to be and that the people we put on pedestals are just as fucked up and as human as us.
Certainly, others feel the same equal redundancy to importance in discussing the ideas that might make us all better people. Still, it remains boring and pointless. Everything happens the way it will, and the only thing you have control of is your reaction.
I certainly know that loneliness has shaped me as a person, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, until death finally does do us part. I’m married to it, and I do love it. It has instilled an undying, at times ambitious obsession, with the hopeless, helpless depravity we all have to face in life. Some of us seemingly more than others. Though, at times, I still find myself searching for comfort in the company of others, I’ve realized that my personal breed of loneliness has simply been my subconscious’ way of telling me just who I am: A person who can’t abide by the social institutions of marriage, religion, politics, classism, racism, sexism, the 40 hour work week, the countless naiveties of our 21st century and so on and so forth, this that and the third and the other and etc. and blah blah motherfucking happily ever after….
I’ll probably never have children. I wouldn’t dare doom another to the fate I suffered as a child, or that of this world now, as we know it. I might not ever get married. Marriage and family are words I cringe at the very mention of. I hated school, it seemed like total bullshit when I was there, and in retrospect, it doesn’t seem any different. I fucking despise authority as yet another useless construct we give far too much gravity to. I could go on and on, but I won’t. I don’t know if I’ve made my point (or any point for that matter) and I don’t care. Actually, I’m just surprised to have written more than a few lines of poetry, because this is the first time I’ve ever tried…I can’t take this world seriously. I’m okay with that now. Though it was a long, lonely road indeed; I’m ok with not being ok. okay?
I considered closing with one of my own poems, but you can go look up my volatile works, and follow me on Instagram @alan_melancholic
Instead, I’ll close with a line from one of my favorite bands: “There’s an energy in loneliness that forces one to grow.” Tony Kovacs, singer of Shot Baker, a bad-ass punk band you should go check out…
Thanks for your time, and sweet dreams, assholes….
Alan Doll
Laila Tova: Stein and Hemingway: Four Reasons the Editorial Relationship Remains Essential in the 21st Century
Gertrude Stein was undoubtedly disturbed and undeniably brilliant. Ernest Hemingway attacked writing with the same fervor as his beloved bulls charged his lauded matadors. Together, they form one of the most iconic pairs of the Lost Generation. In case you hadn’t noticed, their massive personalities belie a crucial artistic relationship: the editorial one. Here are five reasons you must invite an editor into your writing process:
1. By bringing his work to Stein’s salon for her critique, Hemingway exposed himself to other great artists of his time. He formed strong bonds with some of them, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, and his personal and professional horizons thusly broadened. While social media allows us to connect, however momentarily, with millions of artists worldwide, the Salon Effect is decidedly a source of quality contact with vetted artists. Among collaborating writers, an editor makes an excellent matchmaker.
2. Stein and Hemingway argued more often than they agreed. They were, in many ways, polar opposites – an endless source of creative friction that challenged Hemingway’s innermost beliefs about himself and his craft. When you, as an artist, allow an editor to push you past your own limits of perception, you are led in a process of self-discovery – a place from which all art flows.
3. This process is, essentially, the translation of experience. Stein often corrected and revised Hemingway’s work, showing him where the holes were and holding him to a high artistic standard. In time, his writing matured, even adopting some aspects of her process and making them his own – ultimately forming the style he is still remembered for. Now, think of your work. Do you possess a distinct voice? Were you not its author, could you recognize your own writing? An editor will help you find this voice, focus it, and translate its message to your audience.
4. The credibility of Stein’s name and mentorship lent him afforded the respect of many in Paris and New York, permitting Hemingway to leap from mid-level journalism into full pursuit of literary composition. Even when their editorial relationship later dissolved in controversy, Stein and Hemingway each benefited from their association, their respective audiences (and, of course, their posthumous readership) overlapping and expanding. Similarly, post-modern editors and authors lend each other credibility and status when publicly working together.
Yet, while it is easy to focus solely on the “exposure” that a publisher can provide, the most reputable and coveted ones prioritize the editorial process, hoping, above all else, to produce works that possess both market and literary value. Each of these values diminish when lacking the other; Stein and Hemingway were both expanded and illuminated by the work of the other, and the literary world enlarged with them. So, friends, if you don’t have an editor, get one! Would you want your work to be capable of any less?
Laila Tova, a mid-twenties student, full time mother, and editor, hails from the lush state of Washington. She has published a chapbook 'Paradis: poems of the sea' and has been a crucial component in the editorial dept. of our founder, Josh Dale's, debut chapbook: 'Duality Lies Beneath'. She is a co-editor of Eris Magazine and operates Thorn+Glory, an online jewelry store.
Shadia Alam, M.D. : Giving Form to Passion
Writing is an act of creation, and in being so, is inherently sexual. How we show up in bed is how we show up in life, especially when it comes to our creative endeavors. Inspiration only ever demands one thing of us – that through the alchemy of our minds, we transform thought into living experience. Writing is one of the erotic mechanisms by which this takes place, an act of intimate love between writer and spirit rather than two physical bodies.
Of course, I didn’t always experience my own writing process this way. By my early thirties, I’d written thousands of essays and poems on the typical (and predictable) range of subjects – love, heartbreak, the struggle to find myself- and I had begun working on two books in the area of my professional expertise of medicine and holistic health. I never fathomed that the first book I would actually publish would be on the topic of sacred sexual relationships. In fact, when I started exploring sacred sexuality in my personal life around that time, I realized that writing about it could be risky. How would it reflect on me? Would others take me seriously? Was I opening myself up to the intense scrutiny that so many unconventional writers face? It wasn’t as “safe” as anything I’d written before, and because of this, I knew it was that much more important. To be the type of writer who is unfailingly aligned with inspiration, one must be willing to kill his or her ego repeatedly. This is surrender to the art. This is oblivion of the self. This is the creative ecstasy that invites into the world the stories that need to be told. As writers, we are conduits. We don’t own the message, we give birth to it.
* * *
My experience was teaching me that every creative act is fundamentally sexual and vice versa. Once we expand our understanding of sexuality to include not just physical sexual activity but also to envelope the very energy and vibration that exists in each living thing, we can begin to tap into the richness of the creative process itself. Our thoughts and emotions are alive. They are intuitive. They are a part of us and yet they are not from us. How we choose to invite them in to engage with us for the purpose of our writing determines how authentic our writing will actually be.
Just as two lovers unite as individuals and arouse in the other a physical awakening through their union, so are their souls similarly aroused and awakened. The process of welcoming our souls into the act of physical love-making is no different than the invitation we extend unconsciously while we write. We are seeking union between the spirit of creativity and our physical bodies. We are losing ourselves as individuals for the sake of elevating our awareness into another, previously unattainable, collective dimension. Surrendering to this process is the ongoing duty of the writer. It doesn’t necessarily have to be perceived by everyone as sexual, but I’ve found it helps immensely. What makes for good sex, makes for good writing. And that is meeting the spirit of the work with utter abandon and authenticity.
I didn’t need to cure myself of the fear of what others think about my book or the topics within it. I just needed to embrace the fear and observe how in doing so, it transformed into exhilaration. Publishing a book is a roller coaster of emotions that cannot be ridden with stiff, rigid expectations. There needs to exist a flexibility and fluidity to allow the book to develop how it will, according to its own desires. My book needed to be born and was slowly composed over two years in bits and pieces without my even realizing it. Once I saw what it wanted to become, I committed my soul to it. I loved it. I recognized it as the voice of my deepest yearnings. I realized that I couldn’t give life to it without also giving life to myself. We were intertwined as two separate entities, fated in symbiosis until our deaths. We would never again exist one without the other.
* * *
Writing is about giving form to passion. To write effectively is to inspire the essence of that passion in your reader, to invite him or her to dance within your own mind. This is an act of communion on an intellectual and spiritual level. This is why writing is so transcendent. This is why you can pick up a book written one hundred years ago and merge yourself with the author’s thoughts as if no time or distance was separating you at all. Because the truth is, time and distance are relative anyway. By losing yourself in the ecstasy of your own writing, you discover you have nothing left to experience but sensation itself.
Seek to passionately and sexually love the writing process. Yes, writing is cerebral but it is also emotional. No matter what the topic, in life as in bed, the coming together of the two is the soul of creativity.
Shadia Alam, MD is a board-certified physician and author whose writing merges science with spirituality. Her first book, “Love, Sex & Transcendence: The Art and Science of Sacred Relationships” can be found in bookstores in the Northern Indiana area as well as on Amazon.com and other online retailers. She can be found on Instagram, @eosinlove, as well as on her website www.shadiaalam.com.
Gus Sanchez: Writing as Therapy
Think back to when you were younger. You probably kept a journal, perhaps under lock and key, away from prying eyes. What was so precious to you in that journal? Your emotions, for sure; that journal helped you make sense of your pubescent emotions. You tried to unravel conflicted emotions of unrequited love, of not fitting in, feelings of awkwardness. Perhaps you even tried to quell suicidal thoughts.
That journal you kept was your therapy.
Writing is therapy.
Whether we writers spin tales of fantastical lands, or unearth new perspectives from years of research, we are engaging in a form of therapy that allows us to understand so much of ourselves through fictional and real lives. As readers, we come to see ourselves in the unreliable narrator of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, or the unnamed heroine of Sylvia Plath’s poetry; their creation’s struggles, and the struggles of the creators, are our struggles.
Art is the sum of the struggle. The best art, or, at the very least, the art we enjoy and respond to, comes from the emotional struggle. Think of the lyrics of Kurt Cobain or Elliott Smith. Think of Sylvia Plath’s poetry. Think of Hubert Selby’s bitter prose.
Go back to that journal, if you still have it – it’s probably tucked away in your old room at your parents’ home, and yes, your parents have read it. Read a few passages; the language may be simpler, the emotions rawer, but you can still identify with that thirteen-year-old you, the one whose parents don’t understand, the one whose friends offer pain and pleasure. What’s changed is you, physically, but you still need to make sense of the same conflicts and traumas. That’s why so many of us gravitate towards writing, as a means of cognitive therapy.
With the advent of social media, the avenues for self-expression are nearly endless, and, with that, the medium for us to express our thoughts, whether they’re trite or earth-shattering. When we read poetry on social media, we are reading therapy in session. And there are no bounds of confidentiality between patient and therapist to respect; the patient is also the therapist, and by sharing their words online, the writer is engaging in feedback that is both visceral and cognitive. How many times have you read someone’s words and immediately understood the pain they’ve shared? Countless times, of course.
When a writer tells you “writing is my therapy,” this isn’t a glib declaration. It’s a time-honored and valuable form of self-analysis. I chose to write to quiet my own internal criticisms, and to understand the cycle of obsessive thinking that has been a major part of my life. Needless to say, writing isn’t the best practice for mental health provision, but writing, or engaging in any form of creativity, is the salve we oftentimes need to soothe these psychic wounds.
Corporate drone by day, swashbuckling wordsmith by night, Gus Sanchez's work has been featured in several online and print journals. He is the author of Out Where the Buses Don't Run: Seven Years of Rants, Raves, Dirty Jokes and Bad Ideas From a Small But Loud Corner of the Blogosphere, a self-indulgent tome no one should bother to read. A native New Yorker, Gus now lives in Charlotte, NC, with his wife, his daughter, a bionic dog, and a vinyl record collection that's spinning out of control. Spinning...get it?
Instagram: @g.sanchez_writes
Damian Rucci: One Time at 'Poetry at the Port'
Around 8:15pm at night on the first and third Thursday of the month, the poets smoke their cigarettes outside of Espresso Joes on West Front Street in Keyport. The features have just finished their sets and now they stretch their legs and bullshit in the breeze from the bay. Inside, the other poets sign their names on the open mic list and barrage the barista Ross with orders of coffees.
There are a lot of us now.
Nine months ago we put on a poetry reading with nine people on the bill at a coffee shop in the town over. I had frequented an open mic there a couple years before that died out but that night I was expecting eight people to come out. Instead forty people crammed into the little coffee shop crowding all of the chairs, sitting on the floor, and hollering over the chatter of coffee beans grinding. We read in front of the cash register and left the show excited and confused. There was already a loose poetry scene in New Jersey. Some pockets on the Jersey Shore in Toms River and some big activity in the North with a couple mics and slams scattered through the middle. The same folks came out to these things week in and week out. They would have fun for two hours and go home forgetting about the night before.
Something was different. The people who came out to this one weren’t the clean-cut Button Poetry crowd that gathered around most of the mics. They were raw. Crude. Real cats that were tired of the state that poetry had fallen into. Tired of the boring droning of older academics about their flowers blooming in the gardens of houses with white fences. Tired of the copycat point grubbing anthems of the poetry slams where every poet tackled the same issues with more and more dramatic hand gestures and teary eyed inflections. Tired of virtue signaling and the censoring of the new wave social justice death traps that some of the last of the New Jersey coffee shops had fallen into.
We found a new home at Espresso Joes a mile down the road right in the middle of Keyport, a bay town that I had live in my entire life. I had tried to get a poetry night going for sometime but the old owners didn’t want to hear it. Eventually we were given a night to try and do something and it worked. We started with a handful of people and now we fill the place every other Thursday. We’ve watched amazing poets perform, we’ve seen someone strip on the mic, we’ve seen people break into madness and shred themselves for us. Something magical has started here.
It’s 8:20pm now and the break is winding down. Scott Gregory, our own local madman is ranting about the disco cover band across the street, Cord Moreski is talking to other poets about putting them onto his own show in Asbury Park, Charles Joseph and Brandon Diehl talk behind cigarettes squinting in the setting sun. Moly and Jon are looking over their poems preparing for the open mic. Rich chews on the end of a wooden pipe playing with his beard as he debates Tom Gullstrand on the last features’ newest poem. Danny Brown scribbles into his journal tapping his feet to the beat of the disco drums.
I put my arm around Rebecca, kiss her forehead and we smile at the scene that has started to boom in Keyport. It’s 8:25pm and we all go back inside.
Damian Rucci is a spoken word poet hailing from the Northern New Jersey area. Past events led him into the world of spoken poetry, as if by a chance with faith, and hasn't looked back since. Take a glimpse into his world through social media and look into his events (and certainly try to go to said events).
Christina Hart: Thoughts on Writing
Writing is not what you make it; it is what makes you. It is the screaming in your head, the strange beating of your heart, trying to tell you something. Sometimes it is only a whisper. It is waking up at 3 AM and jotting a few words down so you don’t forget them. It is too much to say and never enough time to say it. It is a million ideas and only two hands to get them all down fast enough before they fly away for someone else to grab onto. It is restless and demanding and tiring and imaginative and reckless and brave. Sometimes it is what you are too afraid to speak aloud. Sometimes it is the things you aren’t proud of. Sometimes it is what you wish it wasn’t. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, it is everything you hoped it would be. But more often than not, it is a violent ache in your rib that won’t subside.
However, it is what you make it on paper. It is how you explain it, how you express it. I think too many writers suffer under some grand illusion that you can simply jot down an idea and it will be something that will be remembered for decades, even centuries. The idea comes first; but it is your duty to shape it and mold it into something beautiful, something that demands to be remembered.
“Love hurts.” Fine, sometimes maybe it is just that simple. Maybe for some people, that’s enough. But where does it hurt? How does it hurt? How can you take an idea and recycle it and make it into something that is your own? How can you tell me all the ways in which love has hurt you, destroyed you, and shaped you into something different than you were before you felt it? How can you tell me about the way you felt that time when you climbed that ladder and there was no one to join you when you reached the top? When love had abandoned you and left you with a permanent reminder of what it means to taste loss? What can you teach me about suffering? About beauty? About the human condition? Can you tell me what loneliness feels like when you’ve wrapped yourself up in a tidy bow and no one stops to inquire what’s hiding underneath?
Readers want to know. They want to feel something. They want to yearn or smile or cry or laugh. It’s their job to buy the ticket but your duty to take them on the ride.
We would be serving an injustice to our readers if we were too lazy to explore. If we were too bored to bother to try to make sense of the most intense things we feel and experience. If we were too scared to dig up all that shit we try so hard to bury. If we were too weak to admit that sometimes, there is nothing anyone can say to take away certain pain. If we were too uninterested in getting to the core of our very being and what this writing thing is clawing at and trying to make of us. What it’s trying to make us say, and how it’s meant to be said, today. Now.
Clichés will be the death of this generation if we do not find new ways to say something, if we do not say anything at all but things that have been said before. If we say it all exactly as it has already been presented time and time again.
If you’re going to write something, make it worth reading twice. Make it worth remembering. Make it worth the reader’s time. Make it something they could never possibly forget because something about it shook their insides and altered their perception. Make them uncomfortable with the honesty hiding behind it. Change them, if not for a lifetime, then only for a moment.
Listen to the words calling you, begging you to play with them. Dress them in outfits they’ve never worn before. Don’t take the easy way out. Don’t use a lazy metaphor. Don’t think your readers won’t grasp certain things. Don’t doubt their intelligence. Don’t, for one line or second, think they won’t notice the lack of raw and utter truth.
And above all else, follow the craft, not the crowd.
Christina Hart is a self-published author with a BA in Creative Writing and English. Her fifth novel to date, Fresh Skin, is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online retailers. Keep up with her on Twitter, @ChristinaKHart, or on Instagram, @christinakaylenhart.
Introduction
Hello and welcome to The Weekly ° (degree). Here, the Thirty West team will post a selected column donated from a submitter. Topics are generally open, and discussion is encouraged, however, if slanderous/belligerent/sexually deviant content is posted, we will delete and flag you from future contributions. Prose, long-form poetry, and critical essays are welcomed. Lastly, please include a timestamp before submitting. We are collecting metadata on how time effects topic choice. Thanks and hope you all have a great day! -Josh