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| Uruguayan author Horacio Quiroga, king of the depressing surreal short story |
I think I have a theory as to why so many of the world's great authors died young (whether by choice – Horacio Quiroga, Leopoldo Lugones – or by an untimely sickness – Franz Kafka, Edgar Allen Poe). In general, people hear about or live through sad moments, hours, months, or years and then move on to continue life as usual, or as much so as possible, with their jobs and families. On the other hand, many writers, as the word so blatantly implies, write about those experiences, experiences which often unearth deeply buried emotions and sympathies within the writer himself and, if the episode is well-expressed, within the reader as well. A pattern among the most poignant works of literature is their connection to reality, to real suffering, to real joy, to real pain, to real happiness, to real experiences lived by real people. One doesn't have to look much further than one's own family and friends to find literary inspiration.
She found her husband in bed with another man...
He left behind a young daughter and beautiful wife after a long, drawn out fight with multiple sclerosis...
A terrible cancer took him/her/them away from us way too soon...
Her father's gambling addiction kept them in financial ruin until he passed away...
Despite differences between approaches to the writing process (there are two main branches plus a wide spectrum in between), all authors spend a significant time reflecting upon the subject of their future literary creation. Some perform this stage in a purely mental fashion, brewing all of their ideas for the plot, characters, setting, and structure within their head before spilling them all onto paper (or onto a computer as seems to be the case nowadays) diving directly into a writing campaign, what genetic critics label as the first clear attempt to begin the story, novel, essay, poem, etc. Others, which tends to include a wider range of writers, brainstorm on paper, developing their ideas separately before then organizing them into their work of literature. During this first stage, which can last hours, days, or even years, writers are forced (somewhat masochistically at times) to dwell upon often painful experiences, analyzing the episode down to even the most minuscule of details such as the characters' clothing, facial, and body expressions; if they are eating, what they are eating; the weather; the color of the walls, the furniture, the floor...
Authors who draw upon personal experiences as inspiration must mentally and emotionally relive blissful, tepid, haunting moments in an effort to bring the reader into their world constructed upon ink-stained paper. Even if the difficult moment was not a personal experience, putting oneself in the place of the other person, trying to imagine their suffering and innermost thoughts, can throw an author into depression, which may or may not be conducive to his writing... Then, after the initial brainstorming and the start of the writing campaign, the author must go back through his writing to edit and re-edit and make changes and corrections, reliving the experience for a third, fourth, fifth, or as many times as it requires for him to be content with his work.
Now, I wouldn't necessarily call myself a writer, nor am I trying to compare myself to the excellent authors listed above, but, for us amateurs, blogging and journaling do require a similar process, perhaps on a smaller scale, but similar nonetheless. Also, I don't know about you, but when I dwell on something or imagine it, keeping it within my thoughts, my imagination tends to run wild, typically jumping to the worst of conclusions...
"Why hasn't my mom called yet is she okay I hope nothing happened did she bring her phone did she get robbed I hope they didn't take her phone with all her pictures and emails and personal info he better not have laid a hand on her that son of a gun how dare he try to assault my mother without me around why doesn't he get a job instead of preying on innocent people – Oh, hi mom! I was just wondering why you hadn't called yet..."
Granted, there are situations so horrid for which our imagination has no need to run wild, but, many times, our minds can corner us into desperate places if we have no one to help us out. Ironically, perhaps this excess of imagination is something for which readers can be thankful. We are able to enjoy the author's brilliant, beautiful creations born many times of his personal or familial hardships. We can grow to love, hate, and empathize with fictional characters. We can even weep after a character's death (ahem... the last battle in Harry Potter... ahem). Sometimes we just cry because we have grown so close to a character that finishing the story is almost like losing a loved one who we can no longer look forward to seeing after a long day of work (I may have fallen in love with Tolstoy's Levin in Anna Karenina...). Other times we mourn for society when an author paints such an accurate yet chilling picture of civilization, ancient, modern, or future (let's just say it took me a few days to recover after reading George Orwell's 1984...).
There's a saying which states, "He who lives doesn't write; he who writes doesn't live" (a saying I've experienced even as an amateur blogger). However, Spanish author Javier Marías makes some important adjustments to the phrase in his essay "Contagio"("Contagion"):
"Actually, I think he who writes continuously carries out a selection of life. He chooses to give life to what interests him, therefore choosing his own death. In other words, he dies numerous times, each time he breaks what can't be anything but a continuum for those who do not suffer from his anomaly.
The novelist will endure anything if he believes he can tell the story, or, in the words of Isak Dinesen, [the novelist] knows 'all suffering can be endured if it is put into a story or if a story is told about it.'"
(And if I told you this all stemmed from the sadness of saying goodbye to my mom as she returned to the US after a three week visit, you might believe me now...)
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