Reading and Writing

That's the title of a finished, for now, autobio writing on the subject. Here's a couple excerpts from different paragraphs to introduce myself.

My biography as a published writer doesn't fill up more than a sentence. A speed reader could blink and miss it. A few of my poems were published in local and school newspapers and I won first place in a college poetry contest published in an anthology. There it is, the total output of a literary underachiever.

Questions I've asked myself through the years but have never been able to answer to my satisfaction are: what should I write about and why write at all? In the process of examining my motives to write, it became clear that it was to become known as a good writer, and better yet to become famous, NOT the burning desire to express the angst in my tortured soul. What angst? What soul? I didn't believe that I possessed the knowledge or wisdom that few others had, nor believed my opinions were absolute truths for others to live by, so nothing was written.

 

Ok, ok, I know you're all begging for more, so one more excerpt it is:

It was during my college years when the poems were published and the contest won. After the award, I wondered if it meant that I was then a real poet like Coleridge and T.S. Eliot. Seconds ticked by until the answer became clear; that I was to Coleridge like Spiro Agnew was to Abraham Lincoln. I never wrote another poem. Prose is what I wanted to write: Plays, short stories, novels, jingles for McDonalds' commercials, anything and everything. Instead, I wrote nothing.

 

Thanks for the invite but I'm not a poet. Here's more from that same writing about my short time as a poet:

I started writing what I called poems in high school advanced composition class but there was nothing advanced about them. They were short goofy words strung together that rhymed until I learned that rhyming was for greeting cards and country western songs and not to be used if you wanted to be taken seriously by real poets. Also, I learned at least some of the basic differences between prose and poetry, so I threw in more esoteric symbols and metaphors to elicit the appropriate emotional responses. From the mundane to the arcane (forgive the rhyme).

 

Probably Coleridge wasn't so sure of his own greatness back then. What I've read about are the agonic doubts that plagued Wordsworth.
There is nothing to ensure that anyone will read whatever you write in ten or thousand years, or even at all. It's up to you to take this as a curse or a blessing in disguise, or if this is really proof that your poems are really worth anything. Perhaps for you are worth something, and perhaps this can be a good enough reason to keep writing.

Welcome. See you around perhaps.

 

Thanks, but poetry is not what I write anymore and hasn't been for 45 years, intentionally. My English professors told me to write what I know and what I know the most is my personal history, so autobiographical/memoir writing is my thing.

 

I just realized that the above excerpts from the title piece make it seem like I don't write any more. Here's near the end of "Reading and Writing":

"Several months ago, I began writing again. I began by emailing my niece autobiographical recollections from my first memory at age 5 to my most recent. It was, as per my standards, as authentic as my memory would allow. Since she wanted to know the real me, adding fictional details and hyperbole to enhance her opinion of me or as an attempt to make reading about my life seem more worthy of her attention, would be disingenuous and a violation of trust".

 

I have some writings that I want to share with others here and read their criticisms, or if I'm lucky, read if they enjoyed them. I'm not clear yet on the policy of two critiques required before one can share a writing, but I will be looking into that. I'm also looking forward to reading the works of others, both for the enjoyment of their words and to inspire and motivate mine.