The National Novel Writing month (NaNoWriMo) has commenced and all across the nation budding Stephen Kings, and Michael Crichtons and Mickey Spillanes all pour their thoughts and feelings down on computer screens. Most of these novels won’t ever go anywhere but at least the seeds of writing will get planted here and there and who knows maybe some day one of these writers will be a best seller.
I don’t really entertain such lofty aspirations for myself. For me it’s enough to set all this down on paper or in the computer and get it out of my system. If someone reads it, understands it, maybe even appreciates it, then so much the better.
One thing though that I have yet to answer satisfactorily, at least to some folks satisfaction, is it art? Is writing really an art form that can be posted alongside paintings, or sculpture, or musical compositions. Those you can look at and even if you don’t like it you at least acknowledge as art.
Whenever I attend an art gallery or showing or whatever and the question inevitably arises “What do you do?” my artist friends reply that they paint or sculpt or whatever and when it comes to be my turn I answer that I write.
A pause fills the air. An unspoken “Oh, that’s nice” seems to hang there.
People don’t really know where to take the conversation with that. With painters you can ask them what medium they work in or what style of painting or their particular subject matter.
With writers though you firstly don’t know what a good follow-up question is (hint: ask what genre they work in), secondly I think there is a bit of a misconception that writing really isn’t all that special a skill, that it really doesn’t require discipline or creativity. Anyone can write is what most people feel.
Another challenge is that with a painting, a photograph, a sculpture that you can see the art work in its totality right then and there. With writing you might have to dig several chapters deep into a book, really curl up in a chair on in bed for a long time to start to finally appreciate the work.
For example, a sports writer writes up a review of a football game or a boxing match and waxes poetically about the event, he adds historical allusions, adds similes, really goes all out and doesn’t just provide cold hard facts. Is that art or is it just an overwrought report?
Some guy writes up a story about space aliens and bug-eyed monsters that’s been rehashed over and over again and is so predictable that it’s boring. Again is that art or just someone dealing out the same tired storyline?
To that I say that just as there are great thought-provoking paintings and just like there are paintings of dogs playing poker, there is good writing and there is bad writing but the main thing is that it’s all art.
We may have to pour in a thousand words to say as much as your one picture but the point is that we do pour in those thousand words and every little blog post, short story, or even great american novel is worthy of being regarded as art. We stress and worry over the placement of every paragraph, the structure of every sentence, the choice of every word as much a poet choosing the right color or a songwriter choosing the right note.
If the point of art is to elicit a response, to make another person think, to communicate an idea then yes writing is an art form and writers are artists just as much as anyone that ever picked up a brush or strummed a note from a guitar.
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