How Do I Write Thee; Let Me Count The Ways 


Jim reflects on the writing in his life.  

Yes, I am a writer and not too pretentious about it. You see, I've had to write as part of my chosen profession. I was an academic writer, and though it wasn't the principle focus of my career—teaching and service were—I did from time to time feel that I had something to say in print. A lot of it was teacher show-and-tell dressed up as professional writing. Some of it was actually methodologically sound research. Even less of it was philosophically interesting stuff. I wish I had done more of the latter and less of the former. Wish, smish, it's stupid to regret your career choices.

But I know that this doesn't really make me a writer. More than one of my writer friends have sniffed or arched a quizzical eyebrow or averted their eyes when I say, "I've done some writing, too." I know poets, mainly, several of them, actually, but there are a few Writers—with the capital letter, the exclamation point and the angst—in my wider social circle. I was only a so-so professional writer, and I'm even less certain of the quality of my Writing. But that doesn't stop me. I have written, I do write, I will write, throughout my life. And so I am reflecting on this fact.

True enough, when I think I have done a good job of expressing myself on this or that, I do have a little skipped heartbeat as I am anticipating some response from a newly solicited audience. But I no more write for recognition than I pee for recognition. And isn't that an odd claim to be making? Yet it's true. I have never sat down to write for any other reason than that I had something to express.

For a long time, the only writing that I did were song lyrics and poetry. In high school I wasn't a particularly devoted student of English. I memorized "The Naming of Cats" by T. S. Elliot. I groaned through Macbeth with most of the other reluctant students. In college we had to write a freshman paper on Boswell's England. I chose to write on the food in Boswell's England. Was my blue-collar background showing? But, you know, I enjoyed the research and actually discovering some things about an obscure topic. I found out for sure that the food was fairly miserable, boiled mutton and potatoes.

I did, however, write songs. I started in the eleventh grade. I wrote two major fake heterosexual romantic ballads. Weird. I was in the deep, dark and dank closet, jacking off in secret to muscle magazines I heisted from my father's grocery rack. But I definitely had a romantic soul, and these songs let me express my feelings in a safe way. In my interminable 10 year off-and-on career as a graduate student, song writing may have saved my life. "Yes, I find your looks entrancing, lovely, sense-intense enhancing. Do I take the risk in chancing one more look? Good God, what's love in a book." The words still give me chills. I couldn't screw up the courage to get laid, but I did manage to write about it. In song lyrics.

I'm trying to remember the first time I actually wrote a major non-professional piece that wasn't song lyrics. I guess it was when I became a gay activist. Yes. About 1975 I decided to launch a major campaign for gay awareness on the campus of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, where I had taught for the last four years and now held tenure. Somehow I secured the cooperation of the student editor of the campus newspaper. I wrote a long series of articles based on the many gay liberation books I was reading at the time. I was still writing in the academic mould, but this writing was different, because I had a purpose that I fervently believed in. These articles scandalized and polarized the campus. I remember that the fairly conservative Dean's secretary, with whom I had always been on cordial terms, made the withering remark, "We READ your article!" as I passed through the office.

But that wasn't really the first time that I felt writer's blood coursing through my veins. In 1979, St. Louis, Missouri had its first gay pride walk. We wouldn't use "march," organizers said; the word was too militant. It was a totally intoxicating experience, with carnival balloons and a caliope, a few floats and convertibles with reigning divas and politicos, crowd-tenders chanting slogans. The "walk" culminating with a march up the steps to the Washington University Quadrangle, where selected speakers greeted the crowd of 500 or so spread out in a crescent beneath a pleasant late April sun. I was so moved by it all, that I sat down and wrote my first spontaneous reflection-piece, titled "Even Alexander the Great."

The next state in the evolution of my written personal expression occurred in the early 1980's. I had become, in the words of skeptical observers, "a New Age junkie." Which meant that they were getting bilious from all the talk about astrology, channeling, past life regression, unicorns and miracles. I had a good friend, Sheila, who shared some of my developing world-view, and we "rapped" a lot about it. I decided to write a book that would illustrate this point of view. It was basically boring, because it wasn't exactly honest. Somewhere along the line, magnum opus morphed into my story, though. It became just a remembered journal of my early life, and the adventures of the 1970s. But here and there, I began to use language to evoke imagery reminiscent of what I had experienced. Small patches of lucidity in an otherwise draggy recitation of past facts.

I guess it's kind of like the plane flight I'm on now. We were on the runway, taxiing for the longest time. I drifted off and when I woke up we were airborne. Somewhere along the line I went from writing to writer. Now i didn't say I was a GOOD writer. Most Writers will tell you that they have serious doubts about the quality of their work. But now I am a writer, whether you like it or not. I have stories to relate. I keep writing them. I keep polishing the writing, but not too much. Now I really can't wait sometimes until a story wells up in me, but I am learning that I have to.

I used to do that with songs. My songs are almost always all ok, and some are good. A couple may be masterpieces, I don't know. But I always knew exactly when it was time to write them. I dropped everything else and sat down and gave birth. Sometimes it took a few minutes, sometimes it took years. But I knew when a note or a chord was right and I knew when it wasn't right. I knew when I was finished. Also, some beautiful, heart-felt satisfaction flowed out of me with the completion and subsequent performance of that song. I was a good songwriter. I haven't written a song in years now.

I hope someday to be a good writer. In the meantime, I write, and I will write. I love it.

*Category graphic thanks to eslus.com 

Posted: Sun - January 8, 2006 at 09:36 AM          

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