Retraining A Freedom To Write

What you remember, you know more of how to become.

I began my morning considering where my writing had been most furtive and productive over the course of my life. There were definitely periods where I felt more aligned with my writing as an art form, less alienated from the English language.

These were recently forgotten times. The linguistic and taxonomic parry of forced “allegiances”, as the Internet hiked a shock collar onto social media exchanges based on national origin and identity politick really deadened a committment to the free excercise of language. It became so painful to say what you mean. To remedially read Orwell’s writings began a strange form of therapy after being slow duped into boarding a mass train to a certain Dachau encampent for the mind.

It used to be more about say, the exercise of riding a bike on a early fall day. I never used to think about colonial origins of language when I was writing. It was more important to be able to say a “thing”. Mankind makes tools. They use what is handy. English, for writing and speaking - hit ‘okay’ and begin your thought pilgrimage.

From the time I could pick up a writing utensil, I intended to write. I knew I needed a facile language, because I began writing terrible, undeciferable small notes to my own mother, demanding that she read them back. After nearly 10 minutes of one back and forth exchange, begging that she “keep trying” to read my screed, there was this.

“Sheila, I’m sorry, honey. I cannot read this. I don’t know what it says. Please tell me what it says.”

As a five year old, this was the first of millions of exasperated efforts to communicate in writing to the reader, the editor, the audience. My mother was not an illiterate woman. That she could not read, “I love you, Mommy,” back to me from my own writing effort was a certain defeat.

It was the first of a routine of regular shut downs in attempted writing. “I can’t read this. We are not taking unsolicited submissions.” “ The tone is wrong.” “It’s not double spaced in the proper format.” “Did you edit this?” “I see what you’re saying here, but it’s too strident.” To finally arrive at the few dug out gems, “I really get it! You should keep writing!” (None of this paid, by the way.)

She chuckled, as I read it aloud. She hugged me. I stomped off with the flagging, crumpling crayon note in my hand. Later I went to first grade. This led to first humiliating papers on US History. Later successes were in Essay, [Thank GOD]! Then Opinion Editor at the school paper. Then a downward spiralling realization in college, as there was no ‘journalism’. There was only spin. So I drilled down on a PR direction and dragged along until graduation. I still love to hate writing to this day.

Pursuasion writing is sales formatted narrative for marketing. My sinuses pinch me all the way back into my eyesockets when I consider how I would spend my days on such exercises. Everything was, “No.” A wall of , “No.” Well, to hell with, “No.” I have other things to do with my lifetime. It didn’t want me, and I definitely didn’t want it.

The act of my intentional writing became an empty promissory note. With accrued grief, I began to see the writing of other people, imitating my blog constructs. I wrote daily. Some good. Some not that great. Charlatans began “biting off of my style”, nicking insights. It wasn’t because I had negligble readers. Obviously - they read it. These empty craniums had no ideas.

The intellectual class hated my voice with hidden envy, but they had zero problem with stealing from me. The message, “You’re an inherently bad, poorly qualified writer. I will steal this from you anyway to make myself appear more brilliant, relevant, newsworthy.”I pitched publications. They handed my query to a staff writer to do a write up instead of giving me a string. They wanted me to have nothing. Then the gaslighting. Then ignoring me at every turn. Then more gaslighting. Then more theft. This was some kind of war.

Then a bizarre turn. I quit blogging for free, to the public. I placed a gate and a paywall on everything I did. I watermarked every query. I became like Pitbull and DJ Khalid, embedding IDs every 40 seconds into the content. While exhausting and ultimately irrelevant, the theft stopped! When it didn’t stop, I sent flaming screaming screenshots to humiliate news managers acting as content poachers, flagging their writers on Twitter with the original query. The theft stopped, but it seemed that no one saw me anymore.

To let a talent lay fallow is certain insult to God. I found a way forward. I became plutonian, subversive in my targeted communications. I wrote letters extensively to a chosen small list of powerful influencers in media, fully intending to be a dreaded muse. I realized at this time that writing was a means to end, a way to manufacture outcomes in ways I never dreamed initially possible. You never can know what a person might want, until you give it to them.

The ultimate fail is tapping a vein of self-deceit. This was only a temporary fix in a very bad situation. The times necessarily change. We roll out of the confines of uglier times, eventually. We never want to forget those who provided relief and mutual aid in times of extreme duress. However, no one wants to spend their furtive years into retirement in a refugee tent encampment, either. Who are we when we are no longer in the strains of chaos?

I guess I am beginning to rediscover who that person is again. I have chosen not to deal with people who ambush me with hostile language, demanding unconditional surrender, fealty or compliance…from seemingly nowhere. American women don’t wear burquas. They don’t seek permission to speak and only in instutional prisons do you join gangs. Identity is not a monetary object. Cults are top down theater troupes. Rodeo clowns may get broken down, but they are also highly paid with good medical benefits for distracting the bull. I have a different destiny to fulfill, because none of this is me. These are just some of the current projected roles for me in US society.

So I think of places. Of course, I have been exposed to the best of the US Southeast locales for it’s lurid old colonial wealth and former outposts, to its intense, driven, passionate midtown personalities, full gospel thralls, to the decadent nightlife and amusement rigors, it’s sensual, nostalgic and creative areas of retreat, its balmy bays and shorelines and its corresponding rural and drive through horrors. Texas is still the most productive place for the best of my writing.

So let it be Texas. The lush glories of South Padre Island. The open galleries of Corpus Christie and Galveston on the ocean. The flocks of pink spoonbills. The high strange of its rural space highway launch installations. It’s eventful and innovative approaches to government. Finally its grounded love of earth, its families and large spaces for wealth and growth of the heart. I have to be here now, writing, to be what I am supposed to be without explanation or further retreat.