STEEMIT ARTICLE| WRITING AND TRUTH

INTRODUCTION

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There’s something in writing that makes me wonder. Most times, when I sit before my computer screen, my hands spread on the keyboard like a fan, I do not know what sort of journey I intend to take, what song I intend to sing, or what kind of picture I intend to paint; I just start to write, to create something new, to build a world out of thought. It feels like stepping out of the house and walking, just walking, with no particular destination in mind; just walking. It feels like stepping into a puddle in the dark.

Some of us prepare ourselves before hand; we do researches, take notes, make lists, set targets, and so on, yet when we do start to write, it feels as if we have left our bodies and we are watching God create the world again.

source: Wikimedia Commons

My writing, like my reading takes me to strange places but unlike reading, that takes me into the mind, personality, belief, philosophy and thoughts of the author, my writing take me into parts of me that I didn’t know existed. The more I write, the more I discover about myself. The further I go on the journeys that I create with my words, the more of me I see. Some of the pictures of me that fall to the tips of my fingers when I write are not good ones, so I usually crumple them between words, between the commas and full stops, between the blank white spaces that separate words, sentences and paragraphs.

Despite this deliberate attempt to hide parts of me that I find appalling, my personality still bleeds into my stories, my beliefs and thoughts still speak between the verses and stanzas of my poetry. Do all writers face this dilemma? I do not know but I know that there are poems that I have written that have peeled me open before myself and made me question some of my choices in the past. The journey therefore is not one of getting to somewhere but more of what I become along the way. The journey of writing is therefore the aim, the destination.

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WRITING SHOULD BE THE TRUTH

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Before the advent of writing as a form of communication, speaking was the preferred means of sharing information. Those who spoke well, who had good memories were given the task of keeping the community's history intact. These historians, griots, story tellers, troubadours could not lie, except they sought a stain on their name and profession. They held the history of people's beneath their breasts and it was their job to share the truth with the people when an occasion demanded it.

source: Wikimedia Commons

I feel that writing, in taking over as a means of communication, should be an art form that speaks the truth. By truth, I do not mean a perfect portrayal of true life, or a repetition of true life events, No! Not that it is a bad thing to share true stories but I mean that a piece of writing should be able to offer to the reader the truth of life as the writer sees it. I feel that it is the ability of a writer to write his or her perception of truth that determines the realism and verisimilitude in the piece of writing.

Many times, our perception of what is true is not accepted by society, this is not our fault but the mass acceptance of social prejudice by the community we live in. We cannot control the society because it is based on factors that we have no power over. Factors like traditions, cultures, faith, politics, social structures, etc. we cannot make society accept who we are by just being but we can tell our stories, no matter how difficult they may be, in small bits, one short story, one poem, one novel at a time.

There are writers who never gave interviews or didn’t give much interviews to the press but whose lives have been able to be pieced together through diligent combing of their works over the years that they were active. Through their prose, their poetry, their essays, their rants, their letters to friends, much have been discovered about them than if they had been interviewed. Do you think that those information being there in their works was a deliberate act by these writers or unintentional?

In my own opinion, I feel that as we write, we leave our footprints on the story, we leave our DNA markers all over the story and it will take a good critic or a diligent reader with a fine tuned sense of smell, to fish out our dirty little secrets that we have embedded in our writing. Whether it is deliberate or unintentional, the appearance of parts of us in a piece of writing, is open for conjecture.

In the same vein, there are writers who, knowing that people read between the lines and some rather smart ones could deduce things about them from reading their published works, at times attempt to lead readers on a wrong trail. They will deliberately drop, in a story, something that they totally disagree with, as what they find acceptable and the reader would draw his or her own conclusions.

The problem with this is that it is a lie and the moment a writer begins to lie about who he or she is in his or her writing, then he or she can be said to have sold their soul. This means that they cannot be trusted to tell you the truth, the very thing that gives their work life.

Writing is a beautiful art and I love the way worlds and words come together at the tip of my fingers. I love the way ideas gain flesh and become colossal entities that even stagger me with their girth. There is nothing as beautiful as turning an idea into reality and making it so big that the world sits up and listens. That is the beauty of writing. It would be better though that when the world does listen, it hears the truth, not another pandering voice seek for cheap fame and glory.

For truth is something sorely lacking in the world today. There is fake news, so the fourth estate can no longer be trusted. People now want eye witness accounts instead of the stilted, censored, culled, cured, cut and paste garbage that the news media give to us on a daily basis.

source: Wikimedia Commons

People want truth. It doesn’t have to be the universal truths but personal truths. They want to know that you too suffer, feel pain, laugh, feel joy too. They want to know that they are not alone in their misery, in their happiness. They want to feel a connection with you that goes beyond the price of your book and an autograph on the first page. They want to go to the next page and find you in it, telling them that you accept them and understand them, that you are like them and that you will speak for them. That is the truth.

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CONCLUSION

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The moment a writer can let go of his or her self restraints, let his or her emotions come out, without any self control on a piece of writing, he or she will find that inside him or her sits a universe that has been left unexplored and he or she will come to understand and accept what they are. It is this journey of self discovery that propels my writing. It is this discovery of what is true inside me that has led me from one page to the next, from one idea to the next.

Do you write true, or do you just feed your community, your society with what you think they want to hear? Do you set out to be their messiah, holding a pen like a sword and sheaf of papers like a shield, or do you go to them as one of them, sit with them on the dusty floor and break bread with them in half lit darkness of their supper? For at the end of the day, you will be the only one who can tell if you had embarked on a journey and where it had taken you to, or if you had hitched a ride to a sunny beach and sat down to sip margaritas while the world burned.

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THE END

Peace

©@warpedpoetic.

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Related articles:
This is Why I Write: My Thoughts And Poem
What An Almost Blind Man Taught Me About Writing And Poem
Why Can't I Write
The Journey is The Destination: My Poetic Journey

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Music: Wande Coal- Private Trips
Reading: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

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