too much, or too little? Or just right?

I've been thinking a lot about writing, reading, and music. Scholarly life has me down on the idea that only scholars can be truly good at their craft. I know this not to be true, as life has led me down many a path whereby the "good" comes from the depths of places many scholars can never--will never--experience. And in the end, isn't experience the thing that we are trying to convey?

Anyone can be a writer. Anyone can be a musician. The only real way to do either is to write, or play, respectively. Or not necessarily respectively. But there's a gap between us/me the uneducated, and them, the miseducated. And as I go through this process of becoming educated, I'm finding that career scholars have a leg up on me and us. The scholar is indeed receiving grants and sabbaticals and other awards to pursue his or her "passion." The rewards for simply being a scholar are enormous. And these are the people that the big people see as either a. established, or b. up-and-coming. What a shallow pool from which to draw.

One thing I've realized over the course of my not-so-successful career in writing (if we're measuring success by its ability to bring me money or fame) is that accessibility may be one of the most important things you can bring to the table. If I have a message, and I provide it in such a way that is over the head of my audience--something some artists take pride in doing--then where is the message? It's lost on so many, and so many are lost. In simple terms, it's the old he/she just doesn't "get it." And that's in large part because the artist/writer/musician isn't giving it, or just putting out bits and pieces of what they want people to see. Or perhaps that they're trying to give it half-heartedly to everyone, when really they should just stick to the tiny circle that does and leave the rest of us the fuck alone. 

All this leads me down a rocky path. I enjoy my new role as student. There are some important lessons there that will help me in the long-term. Just not in the way that some career scholars might suggest. And I don't want to become that. 

Because of this, I was busy remembering things from before I pursued the news writer thing so many years ago now. I realized that so much of what I was doing wrong at the beginning stemmed from my interpretation of what a news article is made of, vs. what it really is. Everything I can write is only really important from the perspective of the reader. I think. First lesson. A broad vocabulary is almost useless. This is lucky, because mine is fairly limited. Write at an eighth-grade reading level. Use fewer words. Space costs money. Money doesn't come easy. Second lesson. The least interesting subject can, in fact, still make for an interesting story. The day I had to write about a button collectors' club was the day I realized that everything anybody does is the most interesting thing in the world. There are layers everywhere just dying to be uncovered. Cover them. Third, most important lesson. Don't imitate what you think you're reading. People are naturally interpreting everything at the level they are comfortable interpreting it. I wrote a story about a guy that was behaving in a horribly sexist manner toward a female manager during a public meeting. Both parties were pleased with the article (though the woman was very, very thankful). But with any luck, I'd educated a few people who were capable of reading what was really there. 

All that said, my first stories were really ugly. I was writing the way I hear Scott Pelley speaking on the nightly news. Oh, how wrong I was! Yet lucky to have such a forthright editor, who put me on the right track with nothing less than a painful jolt of reality. She said my writing was shallow. Another influence was just one random person, who said one random thing about my blog. He said, "It's so vague." 

What I've done since is learn to be less of both of those things. I work to dig deep and share deep. The effect, I hope is that my message is received, interpreted, and etched in time somewhere. The New Yorker may not be interested, but then again, I'm not so sure anymore that I'm interested by it. 

Why spend one's time in a puddle when there's a whole ocean out there that's gonna swallow us whole?