The gate I open everyday. The gate that leads to my adventure.
Jack Kerouac wrote The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
Madness. Writers are supposed to be mad, crazy, unhinged. Kerouac was. Ginsberg too. Hemingway – yup, he was an untamable force. That force – I guess it’s passion, an unyielding desire to grasp life and swallow it whole then ooze it from our pores and spread it on all and everything. Passion. Writers are supposed to possess it by the bucket load. Well, I don’t – at least not as Kerouac did, or Hemingway. My passion breathes behind an old gate that bars the world from what I consider precious, my family and home. It’s that passion, that love that blesses me with stability. Upon that stability, I find tremendous adventure. I visit other worlds with my son. I fly with dragons and wield lightsabers and swords. I marvel at the young lady my little girl has become. I hold hands with my wife and feel all that love is meant to be. Upon that stability, because of that stability, that rock, I write. My family balances me, holds fast my spirit as my pen and imagination reach and reach.
Just call me crazy. Call me mad.
I am with you whole-heartedly!!! I feel very much the same way. In truth, if it were not for the UNWAVERING STABILITY of the God who gave me my gifts, and Who constantly gives me my inspiration, there would be no writing. And those very few, but very precious love relationships with other people in my life add to that stability that makes me able to execute the gifts and the writing assignments.
And I will go one step further and say — just my personal feelings of course — that I have never found those writers who have been considered “mad, impetuous, or untamed” to be people of any real significant talent. I have never found their work enjoyable or inspiring, or even entertaining. I have sometimes struggled (especially in college days, when preparing for a life of teaching literature as well as writing it) to even understand what so-called “authorities” on good literature found so enthralling and so praise-worthy in the works of those people. I still feel the same way. Give me someone with a good, solid, stable hold on real life and love — and their true source, God. That kind of writer has a strong, stable foundation from which to let his imagination and his passion soar
into all kinds of realms, and because they are grounded in bedrock truth, they create a much higher caliber of work in the end.
Well said, Sandra. However, Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Hemingway were pretty good writers. I just don’t approach writing the way they did, to the ill of my writing or not. I like the way I’m made.
Best.