hello world

[tamaranth]

It was marypcb who got me thinking about the intended audience of my LJ entries (here...), and how it differs from the anticipated audience of various pieces of fan-writing. And what all this is, anyway.


Nowadays I mostly write non-fiction. This is 'write' in the sense of sitting down and thinking about putting together the words I want in the order I want them. Eventually some sort of conduit opens up, if I'm lucky, and what I meant to say pours out through my hands onto paper or screen or PDA. (Often this is the first I know about what I really meant).

And what is it I write? And why? And for whom?

I started trying to answer these questions yesterday, when I was coming out of my grey mood and so in love with the world that Oxford Street at 6pm was cool and fascinating.

What I write (I decided) are letters. Love letters, letters of comment, letters of introduction ...

The pieces I feel driven to write, excited about writing, are love letters to the world: thank-you letters for an experience or a situation which makes me fall in love all over again with being alive. Moments of beautiful synchronicity: or weird light: or a physical response to a mental stimulus, like the shivers up my spine at the end of Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto.

It's a bit like the sort of prayer we were taught to construct back at primary school: prayer as thanksgiving. And if I worship anything it is the dizzying wholeness of the world. World as in everything-including-me. I was a little worried at the realisation that, all along, I'd been praying. All along, me-in-love-with-life has been an act of worship and not just a tendency to bounce. (That in-love-with-life happens a lot more than most of you will realise, since it is a sort of meditation too and thus less likely to occur in company).

And then there are letters of comment where I've been thinking about my reaction to something. Note the distinction between 'thinking' and 'reacting'. There's so much I feel without examining the feelings too closely. Sometimes this is best.

I'm going to think more about the other letters I write to whoever's reading. Who is reading? (Probably no one by now) Who's my intended audience? For fan-writing, it's more or less exclusively SF fandom - despite the fact that, like many fanwriters, I don't really write about SF. But I always intended my LJ entries to be read more widely. I'm writing to whoever finds it interesting, in a vast community which is imperfectly linked by experience, taste, location and recommendation.

Hello world.

Comments

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

Interesting words. And good to see you cheerful and in love with life.

[owlrigh.livejournal.com]

I do believe I agree with you. When I began my own online journal a year ago -- a year ago! time flies -- it was more a ramble about whatever came to mind. A reflection of my paper journal. Since then I've honed it more to things that I want to share with people about life, books, and everything else. It's a substitute perzine for me and stopped the need for doing one of those, although I still contribute to an APA.

Love letter to the world ... that fits. Sometimes. At other times I throw nasties at the world, probably much to the disgust of whomever reads my LJ entries. I like the 'love letter to the world' description of yours, however. It fits for more than others, but sometimes it's very apt.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

It's certainly not all love and sweetness around here! But the pieces I really want to write are a form of thanksgiving, a monologue rather than beginning-of-dialogue: while most of my 'opinion' pieces hope for a response, hope to start a conversation. And quite a lot of that sort of thing goes into an APA contribution - though less so now, because I get so much more response on LJ, and it's fresh and timely.

[ajshepherd.livejournal.com]

I think I know exactly what you mean. It's the song that makes you want to luxuriate in it like a big hot bath, it's the song where you simply must dance, it's the sad sad song that you mouth along to with a tear in your eye, wishing you could sing well enough to do justice to it, it's the movie that has you on the edge of your seat, or has you biting your knuckles and snivveling, it's the dark dark night, full of stars, it's the country walk, made magical by an overnight snowfall. It's the day that things go right, it's all the times that remind you how wonderful life is.

And sometimes, just sometimes, you can manage to get down your feelings.

I tend to step aside and analyze things too much. It's a failing, sometimes you just have to write it how you feel it.

Keep writing it how you feel it.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

As I said last night - this post made me think. Then I thought some more, and some more, and it was mostly questions without answers that I seemed to be coming up with so I stopped and went and posted some more drivel instead.

And no, not everything I write is drivel, but some of it certainly is. Yet I find myself coming back to the question again and again and I'm going to try to answer: Why I write.

People always said I could write. I have a knack for adopting different styles - usually just to parody them. But beyond that I can put things down on paper or screen that make people think or remember. Coming into fandom, it suddenly isn't that special to be able to do this - every other fan you stumble across has the same abilities. In February I won one of the FAAn awards - best new fan. Which was great, really it was. Absolutely appreciated. However there was a sting in the tail in that although I got this landslide victory on "new fan" there wasn't a single vote for me under "best writer" or "best fanzine". "Well done on turning up" just can't compete with "You write well".

So if we establish that some people think I write well and some aren't quite so impressed we're still left with the question of why I do it. It's a difficult question. The easiest answer is "Because I can" but that doesn't say anything, really. There are lots of things I can do but don't, while writing just keeps on and on happening. I write because I can't stop writing.

Part of it is socialising. I was never very good at talking to people, largely didn't. Over the past year or two that's changed a bit, but still much of my social life takes place online. Newsgroups, IRC and LiveJournal are my playgrounds. It can be straight conversation or playing with the twists and turns of words and creating effects just for the sheer fun of it. At the heart of it, though, there's interaction and the chance to show off a little and to be a part of a big shared writing game.

Another aspect that's important to me is the permanence. I get very nostalgic. I like to look back and remember as well as looking forward or enjoying now. When you write stuff down you make it stick. LiveJournal and fanzines are letting me record life-as-it-happens and people are getting to know me though it. It's making something exist that will probably outlast me. Day after day I read about the death of fans and writers I never knew - but many of them leave words behind. When I go there are going to be an awful lot of words hanging around and maybe, just maybe, even people I never knew will find some value in them. Even if that's an unfulfilled whim then those who did know me will still have the words and can hold onto the past if they want to.

I tell things as I see them, knowing that not everyone sees things the same way. I enjoy life and I try to help those who aren't enjoying it. That's part of what I want to come out when I write things down. Writing is just little shapes on a contrasting background but they hold so much power. I write. To remember, to be, to learn, to share. It's what I do, always has been. Places like this embrace that. It's why I'm here.