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NEW ORLEANS, 26 November, 2001 - Every writer says he/she can do it, but it's a tall order to write the best you can --- let alone "Write like God..." as Max Adams advised me this past week.
This advice was part of our (behind-the-scenes) long-running conversation about good and great writing and writng for Hollywood -- something I now intend to do. Oh-oh!
Now that I am jumping into Max's arena, as a collaborator with another woman writer who insists that I must lose Mr. Pessimism and become Mr. Optimism, the very least I am required to do is write like God.
That means I'm about due for a dose of Pure Luck. I've tried hard work, determination and discipline already. None of those alone have gotten me very far. I need the sweet kiss of Lady Luck on my grizzled cheek if I'm going to make ANY progress now. ("You've had Luck, Rod," I can hear the wiseacres among you claim, "it's just been of the Bad variety." Har-har.)
Any decent writing requires some time alone in silence, something difficult to get when you live with other people. Whether it be the blare of the New Orleans Saints football game, the screech of "Stars Wars: Episode 1" or the babblous squawk and shout of the local newscast, the buzz of activity, shouted back comments and bitter jokes that accompany television and general congregation squeeze out all other thoughts. Human traffic and cacophony are like speed bumps on the road of thought.
Maintaining a stream of ideas is a challenge in such an environment, let alone forcing a cogent and eloquent argument. What is left is dross. God moved, after all, when there was stillness on the waters...
As Kevin Carey asserted in one of my favorite essays of the year, the larger issue is that we live in a society that seemed almost frightened of silence. We militate against the lessons that come from moments of silence and contemplation. We live in fear of a quiet in which we are confronted by both ourselves and the essential nature of human existence in a crowded world. Sadly, we have lost something of our thoughtfulness in the process and become, as Faulkner famously lamented, more "glandular" than spiritual.
It would be less troubling, on one level, if this was simply a thrill-seeking phenomenon, a need for more adrenalin. But the opposite is more of our case: we seek numbing experiences, infotainment and truly boring fare is as often as not the diet we are presented in most of the media. The "sound bite" is usually vacuous parroting of a marking slogan "re-purposed" into another context: familiar but meaningless and thoughtless.
The applause meter and the laugh track fire up to fill the vacuum that usually follows a non sequitur. That, or a talking head pipes up to convince us that actual communication has taken place.
So it is not only writing that suffers, but all discourse and much of our communal ability for true analysis. We are not the deep thinkers that generations preceding ourselves became and we give ourselves little opportunity to become so. Instead, using weak tools like ridicule, we denigrate the value of deep thought. That's the easier course.
So I quake before the admonition to "write like God..." It's something I'd like to try, but I would need a very different life, in a very different place, to accomplish such a feat...
"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching..."
Rod
Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appears both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.
Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now. The new home of the magazine. But he plans to return to Serbia next year.
He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.
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