Many authors and writers consider writing their vocation, the job they truly live for while the money-earning that takes up the working day is just a means to an end, to survive. It is a difficult thing for a child to acknowledge with the way society brings us up here in the western world, where having a dream is to achieve and live, that life is actually eating, sleeping, and what society indoctrinates, working. For money.
But money for writers is just that, money. A base need which should be included in Maslow's Hierarchy of Need if this trend continues.
Side note - did you know, back when our ancestors were cave men and women, that we did very little work? We simply woke up and lazed around, only getting off our behinds to occasionally hunt and then eat. (read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, an eye-opening novel) Sometimes I am convinced that their life is the life for me,... until I remember that I would probably not be 'the fittest'.
Back to the message of this post, (ironically - you will see). So money is money. Scraps of paper and metal that must cost a lot to produce so that the currency value may drop one day and contribute to global warming. ANYWAY (let's avoid topics too serious).
However then there are dreams and passions, our true work.
Writing is the main focus of a writer's life, the one thing that you can always get out of bed for, that will make you laugh or cry - in short it can and will push all of your buttons. It is what gets rid of the rust in your veins, and hopefully the atherosclerotic plaques in your arteries (#medic). Creativity is a rush like no other, and to offload it onto paper, or as is more common nowadays, technology is but a privilege.
So, we know that writing affects the writer greatly, striking a perfect chord that resonates through ones soul, any some (or many) writers hope reverberates to wider readership. Your writing, your art, your music - the pen, the brush, the camera, your words, your fingers or bow, they are powerful. You know that.
You write for yourself, your passion is to put it down on paper, to print that copy for your bookshelf. But before you start, or even after you start, a question flashes through your mind like a fire-alarm - Do you want your power to have responsibility? Do you want to have a vital message to promulgate through the ages, just like Stan Lee and Steve Dikto did with Spiderman?
Think - why do you write? Simple, it is your passion, it is your vocation, the love of your life, the oxygen for your soul. Your mind is abuzz more often than not, bouncing off ideas as though they are excited particles of gas trapped within your skull, heightening especially as you need to sleep so that you forget many of the brilliant ones the following morning. You need a way to siphon off this passion, so to fit the stereotype of artists - you write for yourself, you know best. So does it matter if your work has emotions as long as it satisfies you?
For many years, I have considered this - Themes, motives, the hidden and sometimes not so hidden messages behind prose, novellas and novels.
Writers are generally avid readers, and so that is where the story should begin. Books teach a young mind so much, vocabulary, grammar, to see through different eyes and feel through different skins. Stick your nose in a book, and it teaches and challenges you - after all, how many people can walk across a road reading a book? (Please don't get killed trying! Safety first.)
Teachers would always encourage students throughout secondary school, the best stories, (i.e. the ones that are more likely to get an a*), are the ones that are drawn from your own experiences. I never took much notice of them. I know best, the emotional view. Ironic, since that is what I am doing now. But what is an a* but a subjective view, it was an art after all.
So, I went through secondary school, experimenting with all the different worlds I could create in my mind, wondering what inspiration was best and thinking about what moments in life where the ones I wanted to document.
That was when I thought, should my writing have a message? Should it all be based on a lie, a silly but fantastic dream or fancy? Or, should I teach people something through the subtle art of writing, and join the army of people trying to 'help' society?
Yes, the latter was right.
That is what I concluded. A determined point of view... which is odd, for I really like sitting on fences - though it nearly always results in giving me scratches to climb up on them and give me palpitations for fear the farm owner could see me. But certainty is equally as disconcerting.
To have a message seems grown-up, empowering, as though your stories must be published because your message is unprecedented, revolutionary, so it must be heard and circulated. It could change everything, the very facts of life in the impressionable minds of the young. (On a darker note, your words can subtly change the way they think, the way they behave, manipulate them to be better... or worse. They could be you.) Your book could potentially change someone's life, in all seriousness.
Hence, as I delved into philosophy and psychology, and thought about all the fantastic worlds I traversed as a child, all the odd facts that crop up even now that I learnt as a child from books, I thought, yes. A message is what writing must have.
But a story must always have a challenge, or a challenger in this case.
A conversation with another writer is in constant conflict with my decision.
She asked me to read her novel, or at least parts of it.
Then she asked me - 'What is my message?'
We had discussed meaning and themes at length before, so it wasn't completely out of the blue. Plus, she liked to be right. So, upstanding emotional being that I was, I rose to the challenge and utilised all the analytical skills I had learnt during secondary school English and History.
'Yes, I see your message, it is quite obvious,' I had said, clutching at straws and thinking wildly for themes that I could interpret. 'Yes, I see that the tale is full of learning responsibility and recognising their is only strength with unity especially when there is loss, that there are always obstacles, but to find joy and meaning and how you don't always have to be independent.'
She listened with a straight face, letting me run on and on.
When I finally realised that I couldn't read her expression, and she is an open book most of the time, I stopped. 'Why, what is your theme or message?' I had asked.
She laughed at me. 'There is none.'
All I did was blink. My mind was scrabbling as I stared at her blankly, sifting through humiliation, smart things to say, and also a falter in my own thinking. Perhaps she was right, there didn't need to be a message? It could be a tale only for the tale. Entertainment, a lighthearted experience.
'However,' I replied. 'That in itself is the message, though. Maybe you are not aware of the message you are even writing.'
She left quite promptly.
My satisfaction was non-existent however. She had left me in doubt, and I knew my stubbornness and instinct to wheedle out of humiliation had retorted.
So is she right? Do you put a message in your work - if there is one, did you put it there on purpose or did it just unfold like characters so often do? Did it just appear when someone else read it and you too realised then, and nodded imperiously, saying, oh, yes, I definitely meant to have that there and it was not a happy mistake?
If it is intentional - do you do it for the readership or to reinforce the message in yourself? If you don't, same question?
I'm back on the fence, as uncomfortable as it is. Passion is passion, and lacing it with facts and messages is noble. But life is life, you live for yourself. Alone, some might say, or for and with others, to give your own life meaning. What an 'on the fence' thing to say.
Fate and more life will give me more insight perhaps. For you, I hope this makes you think. And reminds you that everyone is different, that everyone has there own motivations, and everyone may be 'right'.
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