Once again Elder Sun provides the perfect mirror for something I’m grasping with in my writing.
Raising a young adult who is nearing completion of his first novel is one of my proudest achievements. He was, in fact, diagnosed with dyslexia and dysgraphia in elementary school and had to grow into an ability to get the wonderful thoughts and stories he had in his head onto paper. I also fought (and won) school systems and teachers who wanted me to drug him when they didn’t like his learning style. So this achievement of his is a real testimony both to his talent and to everything that my life and this blog is about.
I bring all of this into my story so that you’ll understand how wonderful a sounding board about writing, and really about life, Elder Sun is.
After publishing my last post I was aware that it was somewhat inflammatory and also subtly aware of something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Not one to shy away from self examination, I stewed about it all morning while fielding emails from the four corners and even a curt phone message left by the father of the young girl whose email started my post.
Well, I finally rooted out the subtle feeling that I was missing something very wrong:
Intellectual superiority.
This was it. This was the vague sense that was looming over the questions I had about my post, as well as the one before it about my inability to speak up against bigotry expressed in my home.
It’s not that I don’t stand by every word of my post. Considering a blog post is about nothing more than the author’s feelings at the time there is no right and wrong. But as with most things in life I hold myself to a higher standard. I want to rise above controversy and participate in meaningful dialogue and positive solutions. And let’s just say I wasn’t feeling really positive about my first “storm warning” post.
What Elder Sun pointed out is that writers are admonished to “kill your darlings” in order to strive for good writing. F. Scott Fitzgerald (or a host of other people including Stephen King, so take your pick) has been attributed the quote that all writing teachers pound into their students. Not having studied writing formally I wouldn’t have been privy to this lesson.
And this means just when you think you’ve written your most clever, most well crafted bits you’d better be willing to hit the delete key. The moment a writer falls in love with his own words is the moment he’s failed. It’s these few bits and phrases we’re so proud of that are our down falling, as they stand out and distract from the overall flow of the piece.
And what does this mean about my post? Well, some of the unkind references and the sidetrack I got on about junk email did just that. What I’m really passionate about is speaking up against all forms of racism.
In this case it’s simply a blog post about a moment in time so I won’t hit the delete key. But the point is valid and led to my epiphany about intellectual superiority just the same.
I don’t know why I feel a sense of intellectual superiority over people that I feel are unenlightened about embracing “the other” or living in peace with their neighbors.
And what I know for sure is that it is a lesson that will reveal itself in time.
