This is the trouble with poetics.
We write and write and write and it feels good to write so we write and write some more.
Once we are flying we notice how small the troubles seem to have become.
We write some more and relish in the fact.
We write some more and suddenly, we realize, we’re bored.
The balloon starts to come down.
We don’t want it to so we write obvious wisdoms, stupid sentences, philosophy that tilts.
Then we come down, we step out of the balloon.
We are still human.
We are still mortal.
We are still very much disappointed in these facts, and our problems are still there only we have the memory of those few moments when we believed that they were not.
One thing I would like to say is that the English teachers in school rarely talk about what you must sacrifice to be a writer.
This is not to say all writers pay a heavy toll to follow their “vocation.”
But it should not be denied that many of them do.
Modern studies have shown that writers tend to have higher rates of mental illness.
It should be shown to students that writing is often a place where those who need therapy go to in order to heal themselves.
Students should not be given the idea that writing is a vocation like any other. Few people will ever find that they can support a family either financially or emotionally with the temperament of a writing artist.
Storytellers are a different breed as are researchers.
I am talking about those who stay with their words, pain themselves over their creation, their meanings, why they should be putting them down at all.
Students need to know that writers live the inward journey.
This should be a warning.
Unfortunately, this will not scare away the introverts in the crowd.
We only find such warnings exciting, that is, until, like me, they are 36 years old, living at home, without anybody to love them, no real job or prospect of career, only pages and pages of philosophical rantings that will most likely disappear with their own dissolution.
That’s a heavy sentence and a good place to end.