Enter the confession booth: Water Color Writing. A miss-cued hAllElujaH!
The "truth" is a hard pill to swallow: aka, Writers Beware.
“Passion is no ordinary word.”—Graham Parker
The world works in twists and turns and not much more. In life, you know ahead of time things can be unfair, but you do well to believe in fairness and treat people and yourself fairly anyway. Sometimes, our ideas make sense to others, and sometimes, they don’t. We go on thinking our best thoughts and being our best anyway.
Let me start with the obvious. I am a book publisher in Iowa who longed for and wished to be deeply involved in “writing” during my late teens and early twenties. Sounds simple and easy, even normal. But we all know facts are still-life versions of truth amidst a world hurtling along in full motion. Combine this with statistics and reality kicks in. As Todd Snider sings, “Eighty-two-point-four percent of people believe 'em, whether they're accurate statistics or not.” As a card-carrying citizen in the political party of Poetics, I know first-hand that interpretation and storytelling are where facts are generated, mended, and tarried into restless forms. I know this because I turned my facts, and dreams, and passions into delusion, as easily as if it were a walk on the beach.
In the spirit of balancing sides (a magic realism technique), let me plant a quick tangent: As a publisher, I have defied statistics. About one out of four indie publishers lasts after five years (see there, a statistic).1 Now, back to the passion “funhouse” and all its shiny bendy mirrors.
So, true story: For a good long while, I was the world’s greatest writer. Let me repeat. For a long time, I was 100% convinced I was (and would long be) the world’s greatest writer. One day I decided to introduce my talent to the world. I entered a major writing contest and soon expected the inevitable. That my gift to humanity would be revealed.
Alas, it was not to be.
I didn’t win the writing contest. I wasn’t a runner-up or even acknowledged as having entered. It quite literally occurred to me—right then and there—that I might not be the greatest writer in the world. You probably think I’m joking. Not so. The realization hit me like a bedrock sledgehammer. I crumpled. I was soon being treated for a major depressive disorder which required every other day therapy and a variety of strong meds. I gave up on life and tumulted into an agonizing state of despair and deep sadness. I felt betrayed and misled. A joke had been played on me, by myself, inside and out.
Feeling good became hard. Attending my appointments and obligations at work and school was difficult; I had lost my tethers to reality. As much as I hate to admit it, I broke down sobbing a time or two. It’s embarrassing to recall this now. I slouched beside a hedgerow of Osage Orange trees and howled to the world. I just couldn’t unravel what had happened. A bit like Ginsberg’s poem Howl, for I certainly felt his words inside me: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.” I’ve never entirely recovered. Like many self-conceived “sure things” in life, which, instead, become curve balls, I gathered some scars.
What led me to this catastrophic delusion? Something I had intensely buried myself in for several years—what I called Water Color Writing.2 A vertically arranged work of poetics, overflowing with sublime insights into humanity and the universe. A well-conceived stream-of-consciousness conquering almost all of life’s elusive and confounding mysteries.
I still have a copy of it. Only two copies ever existed in what I considered its final form: one for the contest, one for myself. I haven’t re-read the whole thing since I submitted it. My copy is tattered and “beat.” I still believe, although not as I did then, that it’s remarkable. I bet Kerouac, Ginsberg, Cassidy, Burroughs, Ferlinghetti, Brautigan, Kesey, and others would rave on it as the second coming of a long moonless night, a piano riff pitched in the key of cool, the way Thelonius Monk might smooch sound on a Friday’s midnight; all whelped deep with halo basted dew, swayed away in some bold valley of remote Idaho, stars all streaked with gleam, blackholes floweth over, full of grace and wonder … okay, without trying, and decades later, I can still go to the foothills of water color writing.
So that you know I’m not joking, I searched Water Color Writing on the web, and to my surprise, on the right side of the screen was this AI-generated paragraph:
“Water Color Writing” is a poetic term coined by Steve Semken, an Iowa-based writer. It refers to a long, drawn-out brushstroke inspired by sunset. Imagine the sky whistling with variety, and the tips of trees lightly touched by a falling sun on an early November evening. It’s a beautiful way to evoke the colors and emotions of nature through words.
By the time I finished Water Color Writing it was well over 300 pages of stories, poetry, paintings, and drawings. I was experiencing a royal flush of creativity: Inspiration unbound. I’d also just written three myths, a short story collection, and begun a philosophy on time and Marxist historicism. My favorite creation, other than Water Color Writing, was my modern-day myth: The Rise of Moaning Morning Majesty, which, to my mind, was just a tad better than Frank Featherwell and His Puddle of Confusion. I was in the ballpark with Faulkner, right? Go Down, Moses.
Anyhow, I was immersed in some sort of self-proclaimed “genius stage.” Disembodied poetics, exalted upon on high, so to speak. I had convinced myself of grandeur. Many authors, artists, inventors, entrepreneurs, etc., have been here. Nonsense to the outside world, truth to the creator. I’d been dealt a tricky tarot card: the Fool. Luckily, tarot deals with two-sided fortunes.
Here are three samples of some of the “better” segments of Water Color Writing. At the time, I thought of myself as an alchemist panning the world, with words, for gold.
Water color writing … is a long, drawn-out brushstroke inspired by sunset. This early November evening the sky is whistling variety. The tips of trees are touched lightly by the falling sun. The just-gone yellow sun doing a painting, a circle wrung by no more than a full off-kilter sun dog. I feel a dot in the center, a drop of water color spreading free in a vast full colored sunset—pinks, greens, reds, violet, browns, whites, blues, everything everywhere a merge into the deep full moon, some rare indescribable tone of burgundy purple. Longer shadows formed to nighttime dirt. An owl who-hoots, a nuthatch churns one last upside-down song. The sky and the shadows have nearly touched; just a thin line of gold between the earth and outer space before an alpenglow sparks a tired corona. I think to myself, as Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, truly the world is “a work of art that gives birth to itself.”
Soul of Rejoicing … Today, amidst the hot, dry days of summer, a cool northern sky arrives, and a blued elixir breeze blowing tonic air appears. It is clear I will be able to squeeze rock from water and, if I want, turn the water back to rock. I discover the very clouds above me resting on the lifeline of my palm. This day of heat relief causes me to understand the alchemy of the world—these earthly elements are an offering; this water, fire, earth, air, and spirit swirling, dazzling wherever I look. There is weather inside me and weather outside me, a tornado between my ears. I recall Walt Whitman from “Song of Myself,” his most miraculous tune, “every atom as good to me, as good belongs to you.” With this thought, I understand the very soul of rejoicing.
Morels … The season starts with the vision of a mushroom in my dreams, worthy of a quest, so I venture to my earliest spot to search. There’s nothing, yet the earthy, green, soft, and vivid mosses tell me otherwise—something will soon happen. Two days later, I venture with my five-year-old to look; we kneel on hands and knees, crawling, gawking at the smallest morels this side of invisible. “Ahhhh-ha, here’s one,” we start to exclaim. I hear her laughing, “Dad, here, here, here!” The mystery has begun. They seem to grow before our very eyes. We find them slowly at first, then soon we have a bagful. The season is mixed with rain, then cold, warm, then rain, cold again then done. I sometimes think it would be nice to know more, but I stop short. To know more, as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “would pluck out the heart of my mystery.”
Clearly, it’s not about whether these pieces of writing are good or bad. It’s what I wanted out of them that was the issue. I was unbalanced with expectations, and that is something many writers I know and meet have to deal with.
Flipside/Balance: As a publisher there are some author submissions in which I spot the passion, that tricky thing that can quickly go awry. I mourn and admire what they’ve committed to, but know I can’t help. We like to tell “young” people to follow their dreams; to follow their passions. Really, that’s pretty bad advice in the actual world. What might be better is to suggest finding something you can be good at, something that needs to be done, and then be remarkably competent at it. A talent you succeed at will usually carry you along nicely to your hopes and dreams. But of course, I don’t know this for sure. It feels almost too smug to suggest.
As a publisher there are times when I get a submission which reminds me of my long ago self: all crisp, confused, AND delusional. So full of internalized misdirection and hopeful fantasy it hurts me to read. The arts can be well-intentioned but also dangerous. Immersions that proceed to a place where shadows wear out and reality disappears.
My absolution to myself as I emerge from the confessional now: Know that writing and creativity are tricky slopes. It seems unkind that what you most want can turn around and hurt you the most. Be aware of the struggle of others even when they appear okay, aka, be kind. We don’t choose what our pitfalls end up being. Time is strong medicine. I have learned to move on, despite some major less-than-expected results along the way. Churchill said, and I fully endorse it: “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
Like I said at the beginning, In life, you know ahead of time things can be unfair, but you do well to believe in fairness and treat people and yourself fairly anyway. It’s about the best we’ve got to go with.
May you swim in a world of water color writing, but know when to rise for air.
I’m a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Meet all the writers with the link. Check us out for a variety of views from a state gone red.
from Nerdwallet: Arts, entertainment and recreation, Started in 2006: 1st year: 77.9%. 5th year: 41.8%. 10th year: 27.4%.
If one life has lifetimes within it, this truly is a few lifetimes ago.
“ We like to tell “young” people to follow their dreams; to follow their passions. Really, that’s pretty bad advice in the actual world. What might be better is to suggest finding something you can be good at, something that needs to be done, and then be remarkably competent at it. A talent you succeed at will usually carry you along nicely to your hopes and dreams.”
That’s so amazingly true in my case. I dreamed of writing fiction. I was not remarkable at it. So a competent copy editor became a competent copy writer and then a competent food writer and so on. It worked.
This is a remarkable column. Beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time. Crystal clear and muddy. So many threads to tug on that have no end. As I read it I found my brain creating new neural pathways until I told it to stop. I love the concept of Watercolor Writing. At my best, I dabble at it.