The Sustainable Writer
Writers are our hope
Writers can be deeply influential, but much of what’s deemed influential these days is not raising the bar. We need the kind of strength in writing that can swing the needle, and lead America and other nations in the direction of caring for humanity. The rich and the powerful corporations have plenty of promoters. We need writers for the rest of us.
I’ve yet to write that first book. I suppose the root of my own writing problem is that I believe in good stuff. And I also believe in that Aesop saying, “Slow and steady wins the race.”
Mashing these two thoughts together creates a real-life etch-a-sketch for the basis of a modestly secret formula for sustainable writing. For me, it comes down to three phrases.
But first, let’s be clear: if you can’t show your success, then you’re not a success.
No book, no fame, no glory
I believe there can be enormous value in being reserved in our opinions.
But that approach runs counter to our current fast food approach to quality. We run a race based on competition, where so many of us are exhaustively competing to become leaders, trend setters and experts. I find all this not only utterly tiresome, but maddening with all the hipness. We are in a new iteration of ‘me-ness’ that is marginally disguised as each of us being some kind of amazing expert or self-help guru.
I’ve never aspired to be the best at anything, because I don’t enjoy that kind of competition. Maybe that’s why I still haven’t written my first my book, with the need for all the attendant hype and self promotion.
In trying to become successes, we’ve become beguiled into becoming losers. It’s apparent. Let’s take the first of my three writer’s phrases, modesty, as an example.
1. Modesty
I still hold doors open for people. Yet I get trampled by the in-rush of the young and middle-aged pushing past me to get there first. It happens all the time at train stations and airports. I’ve missed trains as I get bullied out of the way due to the abandonment of simple politeness and consideration of others.
These rude attitudes have invaded our writing, as well. There’s a pushiness that has taken over, an attitude that it’s okay to walk all over people. It’s like a smear campaign of words, a bludgeoning using hype and tricks.
For example, I like the word breathless. It can convey enthusiasm, excitement, exhaustion or even incompetence. But when it comes to writing, breathless has become far too fashionable.
Breathlessness in writing (are you listening Medium writers?) is so overused and hijacked that I’m made to feel I’m living in a commercial. Everything is written in a voice that conveys amazement and discovery, uniqueness and beyond cool hipness and intelligence. Writers are so smart, or so honest, or so vulnerable. They all sound so successful and so role model-ish.
It’s formulaic: these ways they are trying to hype and manipulate me. I sense it even when they try to hide it. I can’t stand it, which means I don’t read much of their tiresome self-promoting drivel.
These are the writers who don’t mind shoving people out of the way to get that seat on the train. For every gold medal writer and runner-up, there are hundreds of others that have been pushed aside for the reigning champions.
What happened to modest, thoughtful writers?
We are so caught up in needing to be somebody that we’ve abandoned consideration for others. Our readers are ‘targets’ and our goals are statistic analysis measuring readership and popularity. We compete furiously to paddle up the river to fortune. Too bad if the other guy drowns along the way.
2. Sustainability
So much of what is called successful writing uses sugar for ink. It’s an inrush of breathless authority. The truth is that in between each amped up thought is an endless desperation for recognition.
It’s a deeply misplaced addiction. Such writing is not sustainable. It won’t last. It’s designed to be popular and grow quick audiences. Yet, it’s often amazingly boring stuff. I call it Kool-Aid for the shallow end of the pencil.
Kool-Aid for the shallow end of the pencil.
It’s rarely memorable the next day. Yet, this is the stuff that gets all the Likes and Hearts. It’s all about The Five Rules for This, or The Ten Measures of That. One writer even admitted she was just beginning to study design, and then immediately presented her 15 Rules to Succeed as a Designer. She was already a self-declared guru. A fully-vested beginner.
Sustainable writing, on the other hand, is mixed from the clay that first gets kneaded, pounded and shaped, and only then goes into a hot furnace. It stands up to the heat of time. It’s cured by fire, which means it can be a cure for what ails each one of us. This is a very different kind of ink. It’s indelible, waterproof, age resistant.
Sustainable writing always endeavors to provide long-term value. It is principled. It refuses to trade in its deeper values to become ‘successful’, or to become a millionaire bestseller.
3. Patience, Refinement… Slow & Steady
I’m anonymous and unaccomplished by some standards, an everyday person who refuses to fawn over fame, power and praise.
The pursuit of such things dulls our abilities to more deeply discern. It’s like dumping tons of toxic mining slag on our inner truth barometer. All that toxicity makes us start believing in our own hype: that the wasteful by-product is the real product.
Slag numbs us to how rude and inconsiderate we’ve become. We are creating a world of immodest, inexperienced ‘leaders’, who in actuality are simply becoming the latest in generations of snake oil salesmen and self promotors of narcissistic me-first pathologies.
The moon is only full once a month. Wine is not made in one day. In a society that awards speed, clever branding and results, true seasoning and long-term development are bypassed. Slow and Steady is burned at the stake.
Where do we go?
Self-correction is not a human strength. We tend not to improve ourselves unless something forces us. Yet, we intuitively know that it’s important. That’s why we build things like automatic navigation systems and fire alarm systems. They show us where to go when there’s too much fog or smoke to see. They correct us.
While we don’t like being told we have weaknesses, we glow when we’re recognized as being significant. We strive for perfection even though perfection isn’t possible. Even pure gold is not pure gold.
Perfection needs redefining.
We stir-fry our innate weaknesses to create a self-image designed to resist the means and tools to self analyze and correct. We’ve embraced the hive mind mentality of modern societies, racing toward pre-determining both individual and large scale failures.
We behave as if we are unaware of this, yet there’s no use pretending it’s not worse than it seems. It’s obvious. Most of us will admit we have flaws, and then argue that we don’t when we are faced with them. Frankly, denial is not the way out of this.
Let’s be clear: We have developed some how-to-slide-through-life formulas that are written more-than-slightly out of order.
What we may frame as ‘slight errors’ are significant. Because while it’s not wrong to admit imperfection, it is very wrong to think we are perfect, and to fool ourselves into that thinking our approach to perfection is immune to consequences.
And now for a moment of breathless writing
I’ve known far too many people who, when being confronted with their imperfections, retort with a jaw that thrusts forward, a chin that tilts up, lips that tighten and nostrils that flare. Their indignation is steeped in how much better or smarter or wealthier they are than everyone else. We see this in family, co-workers, bosses, ministers, politicians and bankers. We see it in political activists, educators, doctors, writers, poets, meditators and rednecks. It’s a deeply contained, outrageous defensive attitude that respects no social, class, gender, national, racial or age boundaries.
It’s centered on the extraordinarily misplaced ideal that ‘I’m right and you’re wrong’. Right and wrong are relative to the situation, but when you always want to be right, well, by today’s misplaced standard that’s considered weak thinking.
I am ambidextrous. Which means that I am also left-handed. Which means that decades ago I learned that I wasn’t always right. Trust me, you get used to it.
Writers have unique leadership opportunities. A powerful writer can influence generation of people. I sincerely hope that writers find better ways to self correct, and to write and live from a far more modest, sustainable and powerful perspective.
We desperately need this kind of slow and steady leadership.
