L’Ecrivan

The room was narrow, with the low ceilings creating a sense of claustrophobia for visitors. However, it was a pleasant setting for the inhabitant of the room, who found its crushing style to be the perfect conditions for work. Work of what sort? Well, writing of course. The profession that is not what it is, the job that never becomes one, and the title taken by anyone with a bit of arrogance. It takes a certain amount of pretentiousness to pick up the pen and make a statement about life. How much can the writer know, anyway? Not much, even if it is significantly higher than what the reader knows.

So how could such a setting produce a comfortable stay for the writer? Well, it puts them under pressure, of course. The symbolic significance of the room is what makes it hold its value. One must enter hunched over and careful not to step on writings or trip over open books. It is full of books too, I should mention. Most of them are unread and pretty on the shelf, while those that were read have been read and read again with the damage to their spines as proof. There is a stack of notebooks in the corner of the writer's den. College ruled paper, preferably, or for some, a must, and a pack of recently bought pens sit there next to the couch. Oh, and the couch. It is the device of the writer to buttonhole anyone who feels a need to stop by. The alcoholic that they are makes them have to invite them to a drink, simply so that they can too, and they lay out their ideas to boredom and polite agreement. The writer knows that their friend doesn't care, but he continues anyway because their passion for their work leaves them lonely and misunderstood. The writer often finds themselves there.

The cliches they run from often become reality, and they can't help but fall into the labels they swore they'd never bear. The writer cannot escape that they have become what they are, so they simply abandon ship altogether. They leave their work behind in mad disgust, throw it away and vow to burn it. Their work is trash, rubbish, and worn out, their fear eats at them now. The very pressure that the room provides is attacking the weak certainties of the writer with full force. It is difficult to pursue the truth, especially since the writer has gone past the charted forest. If they haven't, they are not writers.

They know that no matter how well versed they were in classical literature, they will never be writers because they fail to live.

"What does it mean to live?" they argue. Certainly living is not to stay cooped up in a library, but rather to venture off into the unknown. But then the writer does not write, though. Does the writer need to write when they are living? That is the question. Does the writer sacrifice the immersion of themself in the present moment to immortalize it in written form, or does he rely on his weak memory and faulty certainties to record it later? When do they ever stop living, though? At what point does the writer decide to step out of life and record what has been done? When he hears the sobs of those trapped in the chains of tyranny. The bold hero within, the golden heart, the quick hand, and the hope to make change are released into the world from the shaking hand of the writer and they begin their struggle to the light.

The writer will find a home in the hearts of those who read their works only when it does not dance around the issue or fall so deep into symbolism the point is hidden in it, and instead pursues the truth like mad and wishes to use it to free those in the tyranny of suffering and meaninglessness. The writer is to be a lone star in the night sky and a soft burning bonfire in the heart of December, they are to provide hope in the now, and only live so long as that needs to be done. Even the brightest stars and fires die eventually, and a writer can too wear out his welcome unless he continues to push for change, whether that be within themself or the world around them. Once they have lost that desire, they too have lost the title that is not what it is.

So to be a writer is to be ever fluid and rigidly religious to the principle of advancement, to be under pressure from no one and everyone, to live with the strongest desire to be what they can be, and most importantly, to maintain hope to the strongest degree that things can be pushed further than ever before and in the push, in the struggle, that even the impossible can be conquered with the forces of faith and hope. To be a writer is to walk with a foot in time and the other in the realm of the gods. There is but one thing that a writer is to be: not a writer.