Creative writing and crazy cat videos

Actually, I’m not sure about that term: creative writing. It sounds a bit infantile for what is a very serious business, serious at least for those engaged in it. If you’re  in the habit of stringing words together, and it’s something of a compulsion for you, and you don’t really know why you’re doing it, then regardless of whether you are paid for your work or not, you are a writer.

A writer is a person who writes and for many of us, nowadays, writing leads inevitably to the highways and byways of the world wide web. Work we would once have sent out double-spaced and with a stamped self-addressed envelope – posted into the abyss – we now post online. Some of us still send work out, while others, like me, have abandoned the traditional path altogether in favour of reaching a readership directly.

We put our stories up on web sites like Wattpad, Feedbooks and Smashwords, we self publish with print on demand publishers like Lulu, and we sometimes distribute quaint paper copies among those of our friends who have still to discover the Kindle and iBook apps on their phones. We keep blogs too, on which we talk about our view of life, as well as flagging up links to our work. I know, it all sounds a bit amateurish, and I suppose it is, but any writer without a publisher and a regular income is also, strictly speaking, an amateur. But the readers do come and that, of course, is the whole point.

This is the modern way of writing, and any writer not engaged with it is missing out on a lot. There’s no money in it of course, but then there was no money in doing it the other way either, but at least when writing for an online readership, there is a sense of connection which makes the writing a much less lonely business. We are, however still vulnerable to the scourge of discouragement.

Writers must be self motivated and compulsive or they would not be writers. One cannot write a two hundred thousand word novel on a whim and with no guarantee it will ever be read by anyone, let alone published, without being compulsive, and without the sense that the novel is its own driving force. Nor can one plug away at a blog, night after night, without a single pingback, like, comment or follower, unless, like the novel, the work is its own stimulation, and we merely lend it our fingers on the keyboard.

But self motivation is vulnerable to the writers’ moods. We thrill to the work as it forms, and we sense the energy flowing through us, but we fear it too – fear it may abandon us, for then we would truly be nothing. Depression is a terrible drain on our abilities and writers, like all creative individuals, are especially prone to it. The mysterious thing which can so enliven our work, can also puncture it without notice. Then the novel grinds to a halt, the blog goes without updates for months, and even the most valiant attempts at opening the laptop to begin work, end with our being diverted to Youtube where we lose ourselves in the quagmire of crazy cat videos.

When this happens it’s down to the individual writer to climb their way back up from the shadows by whatever means are needed. I usually turn to the diary and start rambling on about stuff I’d never blog in a million years. I find as I’m doing this other things crop up in there that illuminate the source of my malaise. I’ve noticed how the psyche is infinitely cross referenced, and problems in one area of life are usually reflected in others.

Of course writing online, blogging, poetry, all of these things are futile from a purely materialistic perspective. The sense of connection requires a magical dimension for the words, cast like seeds upon the wind, to mean anything. By magic I mean a clear sense of the greater dimensions of the world, dimensions that lend meaning where otherwise meaning is hard to discern. Such a fine sensibility drifts in and out with the weather, the seasons and, for all I know, the phases of the moon as well. And when we lose it, the material world crowds in and makes fun of our calling, calls it somewhat condescendingly creative writing, like it’s a childish pastime akin to crayons and sugar paper, something to keep us entertained on wet Sunday afternoons, when what it is is our sole reason for being.

When it returns, because it always returns, we can finally resist the lure of those crazy cat videos, we dust ourselves down and we carry on writing.

But for now at least, the cat has it:

Thanks for listening.