Just Listen

One of the most under-discussed aspects of being a writer is the need to listen. In fact, this goes for artists in any medium. Writing, like any art, is the attempt to reflect life. If you do not engage with life, then your art will be lifeless, and if you do not listen to human beings, who your work is about and aimed towards, then you, quite simply, have no business holding a pen.

Of course, there is a problem with listening, many people are less enlightened than an aspiring writer believes himself or herself to be. People are not always going to grasp your work, even if you are writing about common things. Naturally not everyone is going to get it when you are writing about European politics using psychedelic cannibal monkeys as allegory. My mother, bless her, reads my poetry with a look of confusion, and questions me endlessly about what the fantasy aspects in my short stories mean. I have overheard her saying to people, “My daughter is a writer,” but then following it apologetically by saying, “she writes fantasy.” Listening to something like this can be discouraging, especially if you are starting out, but it is necessary and healthy. If you write work so obscure and vague that everyone raises their eyebrows in the first stanza or paragraph, it is time to rethink a strategy. As I said, art reflects life, and if the reflection is too blurred to understand, there may be more of a problem with the writer than with the audience.

This is not to say, however, that you must give up your wild imagination and only write realist two-character dramas set in highly described and mundane settings. I still write fantasy, despite my mother’s lack of enthusiasm. But I did take a note from my mother’s book and attempting to focus the fantasy, so that I could expand past the genre label. I want to be able for any reader to look at my work and simply enjoy it, and not have to apologize for the genre or imagery. That is key. If you are too caught up in self-appeal, you may be missing the point. I’ll never forget the time my friend described a story of mine enthusiastically to her family as being “a fantasy, but not like you think. It’s dark and it’s really about this man.” Whereas the genre, alone could be a turn-off to those who it doesn’t appeal to, the depth that stretched the genre was appealing to her family. Hearing my friend describe my work in such terms also changed the way I viewed my own work. I, knowing my genre limitations, used to never consider myself capable of literary writing. But the more I listened to readers, their criticisms and their compliments, I saw that I was heading down a literary path, obscure imagery and genre labeling be damned. This does not, of course, mean I have arrived, but it means that I am off to a good start by learning, not to give up on my passions, but to constantly challenge myself to listen to readers, the people who writing, after all, is for.