What Little I Know

Why write? Why the medium of pen and ink and hand? It is certainly not for my penmanship, or my carefulness; indeed, most of what I write is not legible to others, and most of that has been ruined by a spilled drink or a small pocket. So, why then writing? I think it is a love of words, and, more particularly, the love of seeing thought crystalize on the page. Or, maybe it is because everyone can write, because nearly everyone can hold a pen, but only few can write something that is affective to the body, something that is just beyond the surface of reality, but still wrenchingly honest. There are many ways to write a story or a poem--I write mine with a cigarette in my hand--but it is difficult to write something that you care about, and that others will care about, despite what you are holding in your non-writing hand. For what little I know, I know that good writing is honest--and this is not to say that good writing falls under the category of memoir or nonfiction, for writing honestly in a memoir is even harder to do--but to write fiction and poetry well, you have to be as honest as possible. You have to be sure that you are writing from a perspective lacking both ego and id, which means that what you are writing you are writing hurriedly, as if necessary to your breathing, and that what you are writing, as you are writing it, has killed any thought about how it could be perceived. 

...

(k)