It has been a couple of weeks since I’ve written anything
more than a long Facebook post. It seems as though anything longer than a Twitter-length
post is viewed as a long – too long –
Facebook post, but that says more about the average social media consumer’s attention
span than it does about social media itself. Maybe it’s the word, “post,” that
predisposes all things categorically post-like to abbreviated info-bites
designed for drive-through consumption… but I digress. This is not that even if
it does find its way to both platforms. Indeed, this is about the polar opposite
of satisfying our incessant and growing appetite for instant, easy and shallow
discourse. This is about writing at length – real writing – taking the care, the thought and the time needed to
compose words and punctuation into complex, multifaceted, textured and nuanced
ideas that actually go somewhere. I’m talking about essays, short stories,
books, poetry and even other nondiscursive artforms that communicate much more
than filling a 280-character-size-box ever could.
I am not an English professor, I do not teach reading or
writing, per se. But as a communication studies professor, I do assign (and
read) quite a lot of student writing. One of my classes is designated a “writing
intensive” course and, as such, the students are required to write several
longer works throughout the semester. This, for many, is a challenge. Our
students come from vastly different backgrounds; not all have had the same
degree or quality of prior instruction and many have had to deal with outside issues
that interfered with their studies. Oddly enough, it could be that those
students are better prepared to deal with the outside issue we are all dealing
with right now. As a “state school,” we accept virtually “anyone” and I make it
my business to do everything I can to help every “anyone” in my class be a
better writer when the semester is over. If a “writing intensive” class is to
make any sense, that writing quantity must have a qualitative purpose.
Short editorial: I had to take a “writing intensive” class
to attain my BA, too. It was absolutely pointless. It had no other purpose
other than to produce pabulum, five-paragraph essays with frosting and a cream filling.
It was a stupid, bullshit class that must have been designed to get students
past this requirement with the least amount of effort. It was offered under the
“Recreation and Leisure Studies” department.
I like to write. I know I have some kind of “natural talent”
for it and I know that, through the kind of practice that only those who
practice their art to ridiculous extremes would understand, I have honed that
talent to a fine edge. I am also acutely aware that I am not the “rock-star”
writer I aspire to be. There are those who can write circles around me – I will
never be that good. But I don’t have to be. My point is that art in general,
and the art of writing deeply, thoughtfully, and soundly, is being shoved aside
for the fast-food of writing, sometimes with bacon, and a frosty. What’s worse
is that it isn’t just the artistry that is being shoved aside, along with the beauty,
we are losing the truth. The truth comes from thinking deeply, and that depth
comes from not only writing that takes more than 280 characters, but people
willing to take the time to read it.
I know I’m preaching to the choir. We are now nearly 600
words – more than 3,300 characters in – and you’re still reading. And I feel
like I’ve said all this before, in some way or another. I was going to say, “I’m
not even sure what inspired this.” But that’s not true. I know what it was. It
has nothing to do with the sorry state of social media, it has nothing to do
with my job or my students, it has nothing to do with artistry, beauty or truth
(although, that linkage between beauty and truth, I must admit, I did not see
coming). And it has nothing to do with imploring others to read or write more
deeply. I felt an urge to write – not
necessarily this – but to write something. I started to explore my book
archives looking for something I wrote a few months ago about a viral
apocalypse and who the survivors were, how they survived and what this new
world was like. It’s nothing but a prologue and a sketch, but it is eerily
similar to what’s happening now. I don’t mean that in a prophetic way – I didn’t
know or feel anything, it was just an idea – but one that could be adapted
to COVID-19, I think.
As many times as I have started to, I have not yet produced
a book – not as one contiguous work, anyway. I have enough work to compile into
a book – likely more than one – but I have not yet written one entire, single
book with one beginning and one ending. I also have never published any
fiction, which this last book idea certainly would be (at the very least,
creative non-fiction, but that genre feels like a creative non-genre, I’m not
going there). I was feeling a need to breakout this old-school keyboard and
two-finger clickety-clack out some words and those words were really supposed
to go that way, not this way. But
this is where we are.
Summer break is about four weeks away. The stay-at-home
directives will, hopefully, be eased up by then. In the summers I usually ride
my Harley a lot, and far away – I want to do that. I want to write that book
and I can see myself doing that on some lonely backroad sitting on the porch of
some rundown motel with my iPad or my MacBook Pro on my lap, cigar smoke winding
it’s way up towards the trees, a gentle breeze blowing and the only sound will
be that of an occasional bird and the soft tapping of my keys as I write my
novel of how Covid-19 changed everything.
Maybe it will be prophetic. Maybe I will be the next George Orwell. Maybe I’ll
just gain a little peace, think a little deeper and if I get lucky, leave some
words behind that might inspire someone else.
