The writer’s journey is paved with bumpy roads, hairpin turns, and many dead ends. If you write for a living, you’re probably paying rent. If you live to write, someone else is probably paying the rent. Having done both, I believe that if you are doing what satisfies you, nature will support you and you will be successful. The real blessing, though, is when you fill yourself up just for the sake of it.
I once interviewed a Benedictine monk at his abbey in Baltimore, Maryland. An amateur sculptor, he invited me to see his studio in a shed behind the main building. During our frigid stroll through March’s bare gardens, I asked him what was the purpose of his monastic life; What did he hope to accomplish when he could serve so many suffering people in the world? A handsome, soft-spoken middle-aged man with a happy face and inner light replied, “It’s not the goal. It’s the journey. My life’s journey is inner and no less difficult than yours.”
In our few hours together he gave me a lot to contemplate about journeys and goals and the vast differences between the two entities that writers must deal with, information and wisdom.
For example, while information is the journalist’s lifeline, it is the journalist’s responsibility to get it right. With the myriad of means of gathering information today, getting the facts right should be relatively easy. Tell that to Dan Rather. Maybe yes CBS Had they not rushed to get the story, they would have understood the story correctly.
The fiction writer also has to clarify the facts. A story that takes place in 17th century Japan must taste, feel and smell of the times. The writer has to virtually live the experience while he writes about it. The outward journey is the investigation; the inner journey is beyond verbalization.
Visionary Joseph Campbell defined the hero archetype in The hero with a thousand faces. George Lucas took from the hero’s journey and gave us Star Wars. They are all inner and outer journeys.
If indeed life is a journey, the writer’s journey is fraught with unique obstacles. Writers are in deep contemplation with their muse (writing), slaying the dragon (rewriting), searching for the Holy Grail (agent or publisher), confronting inner demons (rejection, ego), battling the dark side (con artists). In Star WarsLuke Skywalker has his Yoda and Obi-Wan for wisdom and courage.
In Matrix, Neo has Morpheus and the Oracle. What do the writers have? Hopefully our intuition when we hear it and our perception when we have an open mind.
Writers are constantly borrowing from other writers, so forgive me if I quote Dr. Wayne Dyer. “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Actually, he borrowed it from a monk who died a few thousand years ago. But it does not matter.
In my eagerness to get a manuscript published, rather than trust my own perception, I was quick to judge and almost hired a less than honorable literary agent. The discovery backed me up. When I started getting emails from other writers who had the same experience with the same scammers, I started to see the humor in them. My narrow perception of the incident gradually opened up to a panorama.
It’s interesting how the big picture tends to reveal how small and insignificant cheaters and deceivers really are. But things happen on everyone’s journey. Whether it’s creatures of a genius’s imagination, or our own uncertainties on those slippery curves in the road, there will always be the dark side. We cannot know how close or far the goal is. We know that information without wisdom is dangerous. And it is the journey that makes us wise.
