I loathe the phrase “the so what factor.” I kept butting heads with professors in my lower division English classes who would bring up this idiotic idiom every time I turned in an essay. Two things about this attitude piss me off: first, a reader should care about my opinion because it is well researched, well argued, and eloquently presented; second, there’s always someone out there who will say “So What?” and frankly I don’t give a shit about that segment of my potential audience who isn’t going to hear what I’m trying to say – if they don’t get what I’m writing because it isn’t relevant to their view of the world, they don’t matter to me.
I don’t think that authors (or essayists or poets) should sit down, look over their delicately crafted work, put themselves into the mindset of a fourteen-year-old and ask “so what?” about their writing. There’s always someone who won’t care, there’s always someone you won’t reach, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
But before you can communicate with any audience you need to know what you’re writing and why you’re writing it. One of my professors had another question he frequently tossed at his classes, and this question is one that I have no problem with: What Does it Do?
Many writers have trouble reading over their work for the sake of their work – it’s hard to read a short story you’ve written as an outsider and simply enjoy it as fiction, which means that it’s hard for writers to see what their work does in someone else’s eyes. A lot of what I write entertains, and that is all it does. It doesn’t answer big questions, it’s not intended to teach lessons, and it’s not typically solemn and grave: I’m snarky as hell and if I try to write something too serious I generally sound either pedantic or emo. It took me a long time to understand this, and an even longer time to accept it, but since I’ve accepted that sarcasm and wit are more present and pleasant in my writing than sincerity and gravity I’ve had a lot more fun writing.
I’ve taken a rather long time to make the tool parallel for this blog but what I’m talking about here pretty much equates to a level. I tried for a long time to write poems about how I really felt and how the world made a difference in my life that was relatable to the lives of my readers – but it was all bullshit. I wanted so badly to be serious in all that I wrote that I skewed my writing. When I entered the Sigma Tau Delta writing contest at Cal Poly a couple of years ago I tried to write a serious horror story, something realistic and gritty and angry and deeply terrifying. All of it was utter crap, and so in a moment of desperation I wrote a poem that started with these lines: “On a night run thick with mystery/and choked by swirling fog/I made a travesty of chemistry/and my homework ate my dog.” The poem, “My Homework ate my Dog” won first place in the contest and opened up a new world to me as a writer.
When I was writing based on the “so what” factor I was convinced that all of my writing had to be deep and meaningful – my essays had to speak to everyone and strike my readers dumb with the majesty of the ideas they communicated; my poetry had to be grave and deep and dark and mourn the human condition; my fiction had to be intense and real and target core issues of morality and reality to be considered worthy, and I was miserable when I was writing because nothing I wrote communicated what I wanted it to. When I changed my perspective on writing from asking “so what” to asking “what does it do” I was able to write essays that were informative but wry, poems that were silly and relaxed even when they were serious, and fiction that tends toward the fantastic more than the fatalistic and is easier to read, write, and appreciate as a result.
“So what?” is a question that convinces writers that everything they create has to be substantive – that your writing HAS to say something meaningful and insightful and original or it’s not worth the paper that it’s printed on. “What does it do?” is a more honest question that encourages writers to really examine their writing and ask what THEY are doing and how it works for them.
Some writers are better than others at writing substance and some writers are better at writing lightly. You wouldn’t expect Cormack McCarthy to publish a three-act comedy for the stage and you wouldn’t expect to unearth an Oscar Wilde novel about humanity in the face of the apocalypse. It’s up to you, not your professors, not your parents, not your society, to determine what kind of writer you are. In truth you’re probably somewhere in the middle, like most writers are, but you need to determine where you fall in the silliness to substance continuum. Don’t beat your head against the desk trying to write like Proust if it doesn’t make you happy; don’t try to light-heartedly prance through writing comedy dialogue if it makes you miserable – take a good, hard look at what you’ve written, figure out what you like the best, what you were happiest writing, and what topics you’re comfortable handling. Do this with your academic writing, your fiction, your poetry and you’ll learn a lot about what you should be writing as opposed to what you think you should be writing. Grad Students, I’m talking to you too – don’t start a thesis on Swift if you’re more knowledgeable about and comfortable with Austen. Look at all your writing, ask yourself honestly “what does it do?” answer yourself honestly about what it does, and get down to the business of getting comfortable in your writing skin.
Don’t get complacent, though. Challenge yourself and experiment, write things that make you uncomfortable but write them your way. Practice, practice, practice and grow as a writer, as substantively or silly as you need to be.
Now finally a quick note on the other half of the title of this blog. Many people feel that to write substance they need the aid of substances – this is bullshit.
You’re a fucking writer. You are a writer sober, you are a writer drunk, you are a writer tired, you are a writer rested. You are a fucking writer. You don’t need to be drunk, high, amped on caffeine, jittery from nicotine, or hideously lonely to write. Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, Ginsberg and Hemingway are dead – most of them died too young – and dead men shouldn’t be your guides. Write. Just write. Rely on yourself alone to get you through the pages and stanzas that lie before you. You are better than the need for some substance to give you substance, and if substance isn’t something you do well naturally then no substance will help you pour it out on the page. We don’t need another generation of young, dead poets – we need people with the strength to keep poetry alive.
I’ve once more run too long but I’ll be back next week in spite of that, and I’ll be discussing Building Material for your Material. Until then, Cheers, and be excellent to each other, Dudes.
- Alli
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