We writers are an unusual lot. Nowhere in the world will you find a group of people so eager and anticipatory of critique, so willing to stand completely out of their comfort zone. Indeed, only artists succeed and sometimes supersede us in this desire.
A writer, like an artist, can reach right into his or her own heart and draw out the living soul to put it into something visual, something that the eye can read and discern into fact and reality even if it is not. The reader can, in an instant, know about a person a place and a thing that lives and breathes in their own imagination for as long as they keep it there. In this way, I think, the writer is immortal, and that is how writers and artists sometimes transcend the mortal boundary if they are good enough.
In the "Hundred Foot Journey" Hellen Mirram said it best when referring to how Michelin Stars determine the true quality of the chefs who receive them. I am paraphrasing here but she says, "One star- they know you are better than any other, unmatched. Two Stars, is unheard of. Three stars ... you belong to the Gods."
It is this mythical yearning, almost Herculean feat to which each author ascribes themselves in every word they make and every book they create. Scientists can quote facts, politicians can cede lands and taxes, Movie stars can be immortalized in film, but it is in writers that the history of these things is written.
It is strange for me to think that my own journey as a writer began with a search for immortality. My first "self-published" book, Aboard the Phantom Express was inspired by my fear of death and dying. Then like now I sought something that would live on, that would preserve "me" for others to see and remember. I thought, perhaps vainly, that if people remembered my writing they would remember me.
It is that unknown which we "Godseekers" fear after all. The great story yet to be written, the story which no author other than our Creator knows. Some of us are just happy to break even in regards to immortality. We could gladly settle for fame and fortune, but these things are only fleeting. No, it is the yearning that makes us great, the determination to seek that near-impossibility of the immortal.
So I ask my fellow writers, am I wrong in this? Am I alone? I am certain we all seek to see our soul down on paper, immortalized and enduring.
