Why write at all?

Sooner or later, every writer asks the most basic of questions: Why should I bother writing at all? In a world full of (literally) hundreds of millions of books, what on earth is the use of trying to add one more to the pile? And when we consider shorter pieces—such as articles, blogs, poems, reviews and short stories—we realise the volume of existing texts is astronomical, and increasing by millions every day. What is the value of trying to publish one more minuscule piece?

It’s interesting to note that a virtually identical question is almost never asked: Why should I bother to speak today? Why should I hold a conversation? Most of us, even the shyest among us, take it for granted that it is worthwhile opening our mouths to converse. We find it natural to want to discuss things with others, even if we stumble over our words. We want to communicate. We want to have conversations—the more creative, colourful and probing the better.

Psychologists and sociologists tell us that communicating with others is one of the basic needs of human beings. They go as far as saying it’s what makes us human. Apparently, communication—putting things into words, and engaging meaningfully with the words of others—is intrinsic to us being us. All of us, apparently, want to be part of a global discussion, even if it means talking today with just one other person. We want to join in the conversation of our planet.

I hope you can see where I am going with this. Writing, you see, is part of this global conversation. And it has advantages over merely spoken words. It’s speech taken up a level to the world of text, which means at least three things.

Firstly, writing is (or has the capacity to be) more carefully composed than speech. A spoken sentence has to roll off the tongue in a moment. A written sentence, by contrast, can take as long as you care to spend on it. You can take your time weighing it up, choosing the right words, reflecting on the thought and logic of it, and making sure it makes sense in connection with all that has come before it, and in connection with what will follow. In other words, written text can add to the ongoing discussion of our planet more coherently than off-the-cuff speech—and more logically, and more creatively. A writer can spend as long as they need before they write a sentence or a paragraph. Thus text has the capacity to be far more informed, and far more creative.

Secondly, writing has the capacity to reach far more people (generally) than speech, in terms of both space and time. Not only can you be read—potentially—by people all over the globe, but you can also be read—potentially—by future readers for decades or even centuries to come. Now, that’s a conversation worth being part of. Of course, there are many uncertainties. After all, it’s very difficult to predict if your writing will be much read, and for how long. But the potential is there in a much more powerful way than with speech.

Thirdly, writing, by its very nature, allows others (and perhaps many others, as I’ve just said) to engage with your text much more fully than if it were spoken words. For, with a text before them, a reader can be just as engaged and reflective as the writer was when he or she composed the text. A reader can chew over a text as long as they like, agreeing with, or pushing back on, any storyline or line of thought. Thus they too can “keep the discussion going” in their own minds and lives, and even share it with others.

In the end, therefore, I don’t think we should be too bothered by the astronomical pile of writing that is being added to each day. After all, there are many more readers out there than writers. And the writers are the ones who are adding great value (hopefully!) to the ongoing conversations of our world, conversations that readers are constantly joining.

I guess, if you’ve read to the end of this blog, you probably agree.

© Peter Friend, 2019. All rights reserved.

Reading Suetonius

Some of you may know this book (pictured above), and some of you will never have heard of it. It’s actually quite a famous book, which is one reason I’ve just reread it. It was originally written in Latin by a pagan Roman author in the employ of the emperor Hadrian in the early second century AD. In other words, it’s a very old book. I read it in a modern English translation in the Penguin Classics series.

But why bother to read a book like this at all? Sure, it’s famous. But simply “being famous” is a pretty lame reason for spending ten or twelve hours reading what is quite a challenging book.

Actually, for a writer, there are a number of reasons for reading such a book.

A lesser reason, though still significant, is that this book helps fill out the story of a century that had a real impact on the course of later western civilisation. The book gives an account of twelve Roman Caesars from Julius Caesar to Domitian (it is one of the major primary sources for the world’s knowledge of the first-century Roman empire). And what a story it tells! Suetonius tells us of the good, the bad and the extremely ugly. Some of the emperors’ private lives were absolute train wrecks, and atrocities were committed—sometimes on a grand scale—that make a modern reader’s hair stand on end. I’ll leave you to read the gory details for yourself one day. But I want to focus here on something else.

I was first alerted to this “something else” by CS Lewis. In one of his essays, he pointed out that every age—including our own—has its own particular blind spots. Each era in world history takes for granted certain things without question, and it does so without really noticing. Later generations can look back and can often easily see the faults of a past era.

But how do you learn to notice the characteristic failures of the era you yourself happen to live in? How can you know in what ways your own society is going wrong? Many things, as Lewis himself points out, are simply taken for granted by your own generation, without any thought as to why these things are done or whether they are valid.

Lewis’ answer is to read old books. The books of future generations, he notes, would also be a good corrective, but of course we can’t get our hands on those. But the books of the past do offer us the chance to see our own generation more clearly. The mistakes that characterised any of those old societies can easily be noticed by us now, and therefore pose little danger to us. We see them for what they are. But, far more significantly, our own modern failures—that we might not otherwise notice (because they have become so commonplace)—might suddenly dawn on us as we compare our society to theirs.

Let me give you one example. Suetonius recounts a number of graphic examples of Roman gladiatorial spectacles. These were vast stadium shows put on by various Roman emperors for the general population. In front of crowds of tens of thousands, large forces of gladiators and condemned criminals would fight to the death against each other or against wild animals. There was real blood, real deaths (yes, lots of real deaths) and real terror—played out for hours or days before the masses. And the vast crowds roared their approval.

From our vantage point of the twenty-first century, we easily see the Romans’ terrible faults. They used animal and human violence and death as live entertainment. Brutal things happened in those stadiums in front of the adoring eyes of masses of ordinary citizens.

But, if we have our eyes open, we might also notice something else. Those Roman spectacles, by their very nature, were only occasional, staged by the Caesars for a few days of the year. But what do we have now? Our own generation might have replaced gladiators with actors, and real violence and bloodshed with acted violence and bloodshed, but it’s no longer just a few days of the year. Now it’s streamed to us twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, in a way that would have been unthinkable to the Romans. Now we have non-stop violent entertainment at the fingertips of all our citizens. We have corrected one fault, but only to introduce a new and far more pervasive one, and we barely notice what we are doing.

All this became much more obvious to me when I reread Suetonius’ book. I saw an aspect of our own society far more clearly by reading a book from the distant past. This, of course, is why it’s worth reading Suetonius, and many other old books. Which is why it’s something I plan to keep doing.  

© Peter Friend, 2019. All rights reserved.

Interviewing a tiger

This week (at the zoo) I interviewed a tiger, though I couldn’t ask it any questions, and of course it couldn’t answer any. Instead I did what writers can do. I observed it as closely as possible, and I tried to put those observations into words. It’s amazing what results this simple procedure can produce. I noticed—and later noted down—all sorts of things about this tiger that I would never otherwise have noticed.

It was a Sumatran Tiger, a mature male. He had a slight mane. The mane wasn’t fully pronounced like a lion’s mane, but the fur around his face was still noticeably thick and full. The tiger was lying in several centimetres of water, as you can see from the photo above (taken through glass, and yes that’s me looking in). His front paws were resting on a rock out of the water. And he was very close—just a couple of metres away—so I could see and observe his huge head.

That was the most striking thing about him. His head. It was full of expression, full of character. Stripes spread across his cheeks and forehead, though not across his broad nose, which was a uniform orange-brown like a lion’s. Perhaps unexpectedly, there was a lot of soft white around his mouth and cheeks, not because he was old, because he wasn’t, but because the white was part of his features. There was even a dash of white over each of the eyes, amidst the stripes.

At times, his ears flickered vigorously. You can’t tell that from the still photo of course, which is why I have to tell you. And at times, he moved his head grandly towards the rock, and then back again. Once, he yawned. It was the most terrific yawn you can imagine, his jaws stretching wide to reveal fearsome hunter’s teeth and a huge pink tongue. But most of the time, he just sat quietly at rest, perhaps contemplating us through the glass, much as we were contemplating him.

I need to also tell you about his whiskers, which the photo doesn’t do justice to at all. His whiskers were enormous and stiff, extending from each side of his large upper muzzle across the whole width of his jowls. I would never have imagined such impressive whiskers unless I had seen them for myself and had then made notes.

But that’s the whole point. That’s why I “interviewed” the tiger in the first place. I wanted to experience a real tiger as closely as possible. This tiger was a member of a race that is critically endangered in the wild. I wanted to put its features into words. Those whiskers were precisely the sort of feature that were worth noting down. They gave me a whole new view of what it meant to be a tiger. His whiskers weren’t soft and decorative. They were bristly and enormous, a whole sensory array that would pick up all sorts of sensations as this tiger moved through a dense forest, even in near darkness.

As a writer, I take these sort of notes hoping that I might be able to use them to depict a real tiger in a story or poem. Upon reflection, I had noticed all sorts of things that I had not really known (or had only known dimly) before. I had noticed this tiger serenely resting in the midst of his environment; I had noticed his facial features; I had noticed his vigorously flicking ears; I had noticed his enormous teeth and jaws (when he yawned); I had noticed his unexpected whiskers; I had noticed his enormous head with his eyes scanning his surroundings (including me!).

Hopefully one day this tiger will inform my own depiction of a tiger. That’s one of the things I love about being a writer. It prompts me to experience things more deeply than I might otherwise experience—and this week I was very grateful to experience a Sumatran Tiger.

© Peter Friend, 2019. All rights reserved.

My scungy purple notebook

This blog is about my scungy purple notebook (pictured). Every word of that descriptive phrase is significant except for the word “purple”, which is really of no consequence. After all, the notebook could just as well be algae-coloured or tartan. It would make no difference.

Let me begin with the word “notebook”. It sounds innocent enough. But behind the mundane object named by that noun is quite a lot of my writing philosophy. You see, I’m a writer who gets a lot of odd ideas at odd times. If I don’t write them down (or sketch them, if they happen to be pictorial) I lose them. For ever. Thus this notebook is simply the latest in a long series of notebooks that I have used over the years. It is an extension of my mind. In it I jot down, well, whatever I think is worth jotting down, or putting into words, on a particular day: lines of poetry, plans, the beginnings of stories, journal entries, sketches, even blogs like this one. In fact, this particular blog was jotted down in this very notebook. The only reason you’re reading it now in typed form is because I then typed it up (editing it only slightly). But it was formed in this notebook.

There are also poems that have been birthed in this particular notebook, and the lyrics of a new song, plus a complete short story (that I’m not yet sure quite works), and ideas for blogs and social media posts, even the first halting paragraphs of a book idea. I’m sure I could use an electronic device for this sort of “noting” and “drafting” (lots of writers do), but for the moment I’m still doing what I’ve done (on and off), for years, carrying round the latest in a long series of notebooks.

Which brings me to my second point. It’s scungy. “Scungy” is a word that barely makes it into the dictionaries, since it’s an Australian and New Zealand colloquialism. It means decrepit, messed up, dirty, nasty. The pages of this notebook are starting to detach from the bottom third of the spiral binding. The cheap plastic cover is warped out of shape (that’s why it’s of no consequence that it’s purple, or any other colour). The page edges are getting a little frayed from constant thumbing. And that’s just the externals. Inside, the writing is rushed, barely legible, with multiple crossings-out and tiny scrawled-in additions. Even my family members say, “How can you even read that?” But I can. I can read it pretty easily, as if it’s an extension of my recent journey through life, which it is.

I suppose I should tell you one of the most significant points about its scunginess (and, hey, there’s a word that definitely doesn’t make it into normal dictionaries). Its scunginess is because I keep stuffing it into my backpack, taking it almost everywhere I go. It’s worn out because I’m travelling with it. But that’s the whole point. It means I’m “catching my thoughts” and “drafting new words” at all sorts of odd times in my life. Its scunginess is what makes it so organic, so connected with my journey through the real world.

Which brings me to my third and final point, the “my” in “my scungy purple notebook”. The “my” is what causes me not to care a fig about how scungy it’s getting. There’s so much of “me” now in that book that I’m connected to it by much more than its mere physical form and feel. There are words and sentences and whole written pieces in this notebook that are a key part of my creative journey over recent times.

If you are a fellow writer, then, as one of your kin, I can offer you few more heartfelt wishes than this: that you too will have your own “scungy purple notebook”—or whatever equivalent works best for you.

Happy writing.


© Peter Friend, 2019. All rights reserved.

Autumn in thirteen words

It’s the beginning of Autumn (at least in the Southern hemisphere). And to celebrate, I’m sharing with you my tiny Autumn poem, “Parachutist”, which some of you may have seen before.

It really is tiny. A single sentence in three short lines. If you know a little about poetry you might recognise it as a haiku—that amazing Japanese form-in-miniature, which consists of just five syllables in the first line, seven in the second line, and five again in the third line. That’s all. It’s a poem cut down to the barest essentials, and it’s a form I have grown to love.

In a way, I cheat. But then, so do many other modern poets. For, instead of keeping only to the five–seven–five syllables in three lines, we also add a title, as I have done. And the title actually helps a lot; it orients you towards a certain image, so that your mind is already engaging with an initial idea before the three lines begin. So really my poem is three lines plus an extra word. Read it again, and see how it all works together:

Parachutist

A leaf, unfastened,

launches itself on the breeze

for its one sky-dive.

I don’t know if this particular “take” on Autumn interests you. But I have found this idea of the once-only-ever fall of a leaf in Autumn very engaging. In a way, it’s taking the massive event of billions of leaves falling, and reducing it to the singular experience of one leaf. And for that one leaf, the moment of falling is momentous. It’s a once-only-ever experience, beginning with the leaf snapping from the tree, and finishing very soon afterwards with its landing on the ground. That’s why I like the idea of personifying it with the image of a parachutist. To me, it helps get across the idea of one momentous journey to the ground, which is then finished for ever.

You will notice that I think about images like this at some depth. A tiny part of nature can give rise to deep meditation on my part. Perhaps that’s why I write poems. Some people might find this odd, but I don’t really care. I prefer to think, and think deeply (and turn into a haiku), a single Autumn leaf than let this whole mighty season pass me by without a moment’s reflection.

This haiku, once written and committed to memory, allows me to revisit the moment again and again over the months and years in a way that I find special. That’s the value of haiku, as the Japanese discovered centuries ago. A haiku can celebrate a moment in nature that can then last a lifetime (or even, for the Japanese, centuries).

My “Parachutist” poem was published in a children’s magazine some years ago (Blast Off, May 2012), illustrated by Kim Gamble. I have since “published” it myself too online, with an illustration (pictured above) by my daughter, Cathy.

I like giving fresh life to poems if I can. I know this one only has thirteen words, but I still enjoy it. It helps put me in the mood for Autumn.

© Peter Friend, 2019. All rights reserved.