The Writer's Food

Every writer aspires to write what he or she really thinks and feels. Every writer aspires to eat. This is the crux of the writer’s dilemma. Crux. Comes from the word “cross”. Two lines intersecting and where they cross – where they meet – is the optimum spot to be. Being able to write what you really want to say and having it sell well enough so you can eat and live, that is the writer’s dream.

There is that other meaning of the word “cross”, the real meaning behind all those ornate, pretty symbols in churches – the Roman pre-electric chair, the cross you have to bear. This is when you realize, as a writer, you can’t eat what you want to write. It doesn’t sell. So do you sell your soul to preserve your body? Or do you let your flesh die to preserve your soul?

Ironic that your writer’s voice needs your body in order to speak and be heard. If you have a thought and no one else hears it, does the thought really exist?

Maybe you just write like mad to sell hoping that someday you can write to feel. But will you ever really sell if you don’t feel? So you keep looking for the crux of the matter, that place where your soul speaks to enough other souls that they are willing to pay to hear your thoughts.

Whatever I do, I conclude, I must never sell my soul or I’ll have no soul left to share. Then it comes to me that what I feel – the soul of my writing – is a line, a continuum, not merely a dot. And because I am human, I will someday find that intersect with the continuum of other souls, kindred spirits they have been called. I just pray it happens before I die.

So this blog may not mean much to my readers. That’s ok, because today I’m writing solely to express my soul and not worrying about whether it sells (the literary benefit of blogging). Ah, that felt good.

Now, how do I eat?