On Becoming a Writer (Part 1)
[Preamble: as part of my mission described below I am seeking to publish this article in a national magazine :-). If you have any tips or leads on that, please write to me]
I don’t recall ever making a decision, or having an “aha” experience, that I was born to be a professional writer. For one thing, I am a practical kind of person, and the thought of actually being able to make a living by writing always struck me as unrealistic – and especially to be able to write full-time about the things that really interest me, which is my own and other people’s growth and development, and human relationships. For another, I have no gift at all for writing fiction. I can only write about things that happen to me and people that I know.
The style of writing that I am interested in – and very passionately so – is spiritual autobiography. I remember being totally transported by Carl Gustav Jung’s “Memories Dreams Reflections”, Swami Rama’s “Living with the Himalayan Masters”, Martin Grey’s “For those I loved”, Yogananda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi”, Max Eastman’s “Love and Revolution”, Gandhi’s autobiography, Winston Churchill’s “My Early Life”, and many more. All of these books changed my life. When I find some modern author who can write well in this genre, such as Elizabeth Gilbert in “Eat Pray Love” and “The last American man”, I spend entire days and weeks in ecstasy. There is nothing so fascinating to me as to read the intimate story of the lives of creative people. Especially people that I admire or who have accomplished things that I consider remarkable.
And so, I never thought that my own life would be interesting enough to write about. At least not until I had matured considerably beyond what appeared to be a bit obsessive pre-occupation with myself. I thought that some day I would get myself a “career” (and/or a life :-), and then I would retire and write my memoirs. By that time however I would be living on a pension – or maybe Social Security – but in either case I would not need an independent income, right?
Recent events however – especially writing for these blogs Adventures in Relationship and Community and Lifestyle Design Blog – have convinced me otherwise. I have no doubt anymore that I am born to be writer, and that it is certain that I will derive a full-time income from it, and well before I “retire”. I can’t say where this irrational conviction comes from, as I haven’t made a dime from writing yet – well, a few dimes perhaps, I have sold a few website development contracts through my personal mailing list (see below) – but there you have it. I am now broadcasting this to the Universe. If you believe in “Law of Attraction” (which is really nothing other than common sense – those things that we pursue with deep pleasure and purpose and passion usually come to pass) – then you will understand my purpose in declaring this.
But whether you think I am a fool or not, you may still find interesting the story of my development as a “writer”.
My first significant writing happened in my late 20s, as I was recovering and trying to make sense of a relationship with a woman who had turned my world upside-down, leaving me face-to-face with the emptiness of my life and my values up to that point, and started what turned out to be a very long, painful depression and crisis-of-meaning. (As an aside, all the most important transformational events in my life have been directly related to the women I have loved and who have loved me, however briefly). As always when I write deeply, the writing poured out of me like hot lava during the course of a 10-day period, a period in which I barely took the time to sleep, eat or drink, in which the outside world dissappeared, and which, when it was over, left me with the absolute conviction that this was the most important thing that I had ever done in my life. This is always how writing has been for me. I have never had anything resembling “writer’s block” and writing has never been anything other than a transcendent experience for me. This is how these two blogs were written as well, and this is my feeling now as I am writing this article.
Because I had such a powerful experience writing my first autobiography, I made it a practice to write another chapter every 5 years or so, or whenever I felt sufficient life experience had accumulated that would warrant a recount or a coming-to-terms with. Each one of my subsequent chapters in my autobiography (one written in my mid-thirties and one in my early forties) was a transcendent experience similar to the first. Each one was (you guessed it) centered around a woman (or two :-). The last time I did this sits very clearly in my memory still. I was recovering from (yet another) love affair, this latest one had pushed me to the very limits of my psychic endurance, and when the writing was done, the relationship was over. Complete. I hadn’t talked to her for 3 years by that time, but she had been in my consciousness daily and hourly for those three years. After I was done, I had made peace with it and moved on. Shortly thereafter I quit my job, travelled back across the country stopping at various ashrams and spiritual retreat centers along the way, and had a number of powerful experiences that led ultimately to my marriage and to starting a completely new phase of my life.
[Click here for Part 2]
