A writing about writing - part 3

What do I write about?

I often don't have to hunt for writing topics, they sort of just fall onto my plate. The source of this luxury is not some extraordinary talent I possess, but rather mundane: I do something else for food (and bills). I let writing be as free as a bird: it doesn't have to carry deadlines, cranky bosses, lame coworkers, and worst of all, a dreadful purpose "I have to do this to pay the bills". It is my hobby. It's like basketball or video game or Facebook (none of these are hobbies of mine, but the point is, you don't think "Ugh, it's time to Facebook again, how I hate it! What am I gonna do here?") 

Writing is easy to me because I can write whenever I want, about whatever I choose, in whatever style and length I feel like. When an idea pops into my head ("Let's write about writing!"), I walk around with it for a little while, collect random odds and ends that fall into the topic, then when I feel like it's time to write them down, I write them down. That's it. If you don't do that, writing is probably not your hobby. You don't do it for fun.

Not until recently have I realized that professional writers don't write for fun either. This is a very obvious fact if you think about it. They have to write for food. They have to pay their bills. They have to send their kids to school. They have to race deadlines. A lot of times they have to write about something they are not at all interested. Just like us with our jobs, they procrastinate and avoid doing it. Even when they get the writing done, they have to watch it torn apart by their editors, ignored by their readers, and forgotten inside a magazine or on a shelf in the back of the mall's bookstore. Who would find that fun? 

I fall snugly into the narrow range between people who hate writing because they couldn't care less about it and people who hate writing because they have to do it. Writing is the getaway car for my brain, it takes me away from things I avoid doing, like working on my matlab code or cleaning the house or sending an email home. 

So I like writing and have an easy time with it because I'm a hobbyist. That doesn't make me good at it. Often I don't have any point to make, and when I do, they don't get across. Readers, if I'm lucky enough to have any, would see something completely different from what I write, or what I think I write. This is normal - who knows exactly what Van Gogh was thinking when he painted Starry Night? I'm sorry, have I just put myself in the same league with Van Gogh? But hey, when it comes to doing art, in one aspect I have an advantage: I'm currently alive. If I write about donuts and you think I write about stars, I can tell you that no, those are donuts. Van Gogh can't tell you anything about his original intention. You just have to guess.

Starry Bite by Ellen Brown @ELLE.ART

Which is fine, because art is supposed to do that to you. It wakes your imagination, your thoughts, your feelings, your everything. Once the piece of art is out there, it is you who choose how to take it. The artist, live or dead, has little to do with it now. Their work is no longer their baby. It is now a grown-up with full autonomy, and it gets to choose whether it wants to be stars or donuts. This is cool for you as readers but rather lame for the writer-artist. They made the piece, they are the poor parent who's stuck with this child now. The child could grow up to be a lovely person whom everyone loves, or they could be a total a**hole, or they could be so boring and characterless that no one would even notice if they disappear. The writer is the only one who has to work hard rearing their piece, hoping everyone would love it. Still, it doesn't always work.

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This is temporarily the last piece in this series "A writing about writing". Thanks for staying until this point. I hope you find them pleasant.