Know Thyself
Or: How To Write Like A Human Being
"You have to be somebody before you can share yourself."
Jaron Lanier
It is Saturday morning, as I write this. Some small birds are chirping as if on a loop, with Kookaburras in groups laughing every minute or two. I may have heard a lone cockatoo in the distance. The sky is still perfectly dark, but at 5:20am it won't be for much longer.
I almost slept in. I felt the pull and had a pretty good excuse too. But I've got a deadline. On Sunday afternoons I ship my articles. I've got three hours this morning and three hours tomorrow morning to make it work.
Already, I can see the red glow, soft and deep, emerging from the horizon. Our spring mornings have been chilly. Occasionally, the morning sun is so hot and reassuring that I choose to write not at my desk but on the balcony, squinting.
In Doing Nothing by Tom Lutz, he describes himself as a young freewheeler. He believed that the extraordinary writer he wished to be must draw from an extraordinary life. In my early twenties, I had similar ideas. I'd just left a degree that studied the best stuff (philosophy) in the worst way (academically graded and stripped of creativity). After reading too many boring academics write boring articles, I was fed up. I had big plans to have an outstanding life that could inform my soon-to-be-outstanding writing.
It's tempting to believe that a thrilling life is half the battle or more. Paul Theroux, Ernest Hemingway, and Hunter S. Thompson. In the case of Bruce Chatwin, he had the ideal pair: a marvellous life and remarkable lies. Some bestselling writers don't even call themselves writers, they're the beholders of incredible stories that polished up well in the editing room. Gregory David Roberts, Albert Facey, and Heinrich Harrer.
There's a reason Lutz and I fell for it; but an even better reason why we don't anymore.
The sky is at full-blown Microsoft Word Art gradients now. The lavender clouds that lay distant on the horizon are backed by a soft, almost dull orange that moves up into a lighter, muted yellow. Then, finally a blue sky reaches all the way up.
My painkillers are kicking in. I took some when I woke up at about 4am and then some more at 5:15am. I can even shake my head a little without feeling much at all. At the same time, the awareness doesn't really go away. My face feels fat. I'm feeling a dull ache in parts of my jaw that I very rarely notice. Plus, when I swallow, it hurts a little. All in all, not a bad status report for four wisdom teeth pulled yesterday arvo.
We should have the sun in less than an hour. At which point I might move the armchair onto the balcony and keep tapping away.
Under my article Balance: Why You Should Live at Work and Work at Life, I received my first ever comment. I expected it to be from one of my friends or family—the only people that read my work—but it wasn't. The comment was encouraging and thoughtful. Daniela, writer of Steeping Sundays. Hmmm.
I clicked and I read, and I clicked and read. The work was excellent. Beautiful descriptions and calm, grounded insight into what makes a good life. Her work resonated and felt soothing, like a wise friend's loving and welcome advice. As I clicked back out to her list of articles, I read through the titles I'd read and recalled the events of each. Missing a train. Enjoying a jam donut. A chance encounter with a stranger.
This is no Thompson or Chatwin. Steeping Sundays was a whole other game. Daniela was writing from where she was—a more-or-less ordinary life. Rather than an interesting life, Daniela has opted for an interesting perspective. With her alert attention, she notices the sublime in the day-to-day. With silent introspection, she reveals compassionate insight into the breakthroughs and frustrations that we all experience.
The sun has risen and shines its bright and golden light on the silver gums beside my house. Outside, where I've placed an armchair, the air erupts with Kookaburra laughter. I expect that there's three of them to my left, hiding behind next door, and one to my right, concealed by the perfectly still gum leaves. The air is cool—about 15 degrees—and the sun, bright as it is, isn't making much headway. After ten minutes, I take up my laptop and resettle inside. It needs to charge anyway. Once I sit down and begin to type again, my timer goes off, alerting me that I've got two hours to go this morning.
Jaron Lanier, in You Are Not A Gadget, advances the thesis with which we began this article. "You have to be somebody before you can share yourself."
Writers like Daniela are embodying this idea. It's inverse is all too common. A journalist has two hours to write a piece about something sensational that unfolded minutes earlier. The work follows a formula designed to maximise clicks and minimise the journalist's original perspective for the sake of objectivity.
Lanier's book explains in how design features of software and social media reduce people to acting like machines, robots, or gadgets. Original, human work is sacrificed for risk-free formulaic work. The unique human perspective sacrificed for the omniscient perspective. Think Wikipedia's author-less style of the all-seeing-eye. Lanier mourns these sacrifices and encourages instead the return to the weirdness of the individual—our human strangeness and individuality.
Two hours to go. My deadline says that I need to ship on Sunday. I feel the pull. I want to crush a few thousand words and keep up the standard—maintain the streak. I've got a half-finished piece on identity. I've got an idea for one about the virtue of curiosity. There's another idea about incorporating negative emotions—that last one is mostly just a title inspired by a Bob Dylan album, Bringing It All Home.
I can't give in to the pull. Those pieces feel contrived, like ideas of old forced into a context they don't belong to. I'm not drawn to them. They don't feel right.
I know I could. With 41 under my belt, I can make the work happen if I really need it to. There's somewhat of a formula. I'm able to follow the steps and make something readable and sometimes even entertaining.
But is that what I'm after? Getting work out that is just enough? When I write from the formula, I treat myself like a machine and my work like something a machine could make. I sacrifice my uniquely human features—those features that I appreciate so much in the work of other writers—self-awareness, insight, attention, and introspection.
It isn't simply that the work doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel human.
The sun is bright now. 7:26am. It's warm on my face, but seeing how few clouds are in the sky, it'll soon be hot. I've got to write with one eye closed. With my swollen cheeks I look like a chipmunk that's about to sneeze.
I'm not working, pushing myself further and further towards work that passes the bar. I'm putting the laptop down and sitting in the sun.
I might read Lanier or Lutz and take some notes. I might ponder and listen to the birds, chirping away as they are. I'm going to be a person, not a machine rushing toward output. In doing so, I'll have something better to share and more creative ways of sharing it. At the very least, I'll get to feel less like a gadget and more like a human being. Doesn't that sound grand?
W.
