A Jen Too Many

Diane Duane quoted Kipling in her blog recently. OK - a month ago today. I forgot I had her bookmarked until I tripped over the bookmark while looking for something else, and while I was catching up I found the Kipling quote.

I thought the poem she quoted was remarkably apropos of the current U.S. economic situation. (Go - read her post. Follow the link above.)

She already posted the poem on her blog, but I'm going to post it here, too, since I am currently in a state of mind where everything I write is obvious garbage and even a one word sentence, like, "Hello," is clearly the worst thing anyone, anywhere, has ever written, and I should burn all my pencils, delete all my files, and flush (page by page to avoid destroying the plumbing) every spiral-bound notebook whose pure white pages I have ever profaned with my words.*

So it seemed like a good idea to put something up here that is absolutely guaranteed to be fantastic writing.

Jennifer's fantasy of the week: Tattooing the complete poem on the bodies of every politician, banker, and CEO who contributed to this mess.

"we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things" Sheesh. Words fail me, they really do.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings
Rudyard Kipling

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four—
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

. . . . .

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:—
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
___________________________________________

*Actually, I'm not even going to post this. It is going to join the multitude of drafts I have created in the last couple of weeks, which were all utterly trite, meandering, pointless, and stinky, smelly garbage. You are not reading this. It is all an illusion.

Oh, yes! That's right! I have a blog. I suppose I really should update it. Somehow.

Actually I have thought about it before this, but I can't bring myself to actually post a new entry, because, well, people I know, like my family, will be reading this, and that is just too, too intimidating. So, I write, and I polish, and then I rewrite and polish some more, and in the end I have a really great essay on how my family can't ever figure out what they want to eat, that will never see the light of day.

Maybe someday I'll anonymously enter it into the Erma Bombeck contest.

Reason #101 why I will never be a best selling novelist. "What? Read my writing? Are you crazy?"

I belong to a writing list and this is a topic that has come up before. A large number of us are shy (not all of us mind you - an equally large number are not shy at all) which makes it difficult if you want to be a successful fiction writer. After all, if you write technical manuals, web content, or magazine articles you are fairly anonymous (I know an enormously successful magazine writer from that list - you name the major magazine, she's had articles in it - but, unless you are obsessive about reading bylines, you would never recognize her name.)

Writing fiction, however, is very different from selling fiction, and selling fiction tends to be very personality driven. It's not enough to write a brilliant and fascinating novel. You have to travel around and do book signings, interviews on local radio stations and television shows, have a website and interact with your fans. And, since fiction does seem to draw a disproportionate number of writers who are people who really prefer interacting with the characters in their head ...

Look at it this way: The writer puts in weeks and months of solitary work, only to be dragged out of their nest, like Punxsutawney Phil, to blink painfully in the light of attention and publicity when the time comes to convince people their book is really worth publishing / buying / reading.

The problem with being a writer is, you can't help yourself. You write. You have to write. It's a compulsion. And when you write, you usually want someone else to read it. Having a reader is an essential part of the process. Writing that is never read is incomplete. What's the point of putting all that work into finding just the right word to convey the exact way fog feels on your skin, if no-one but you ever reads it? Oh, sure, you've got the satisfaction of personal accomplishment, but it's not enough.

I have found that just as much as I feel driven to write, I feel driven to find readers, which is a painful process. Even bad writing involves delving into yourself. Show someone else your writing and you show them a little piece of your soul. That's frightening. So frightening that I can rarely do it. Essays, fiction, poetry - they make me too vulnerable. Much better to keep them forever in electronic form, locked away in sterile little kilobytes of ones and zeroes.

Wait a second - how did I let my sister talk me into this again?

I had to send some information out the other day, but one of my originals was a very small piece of paper which wasn't going to fit through the fax machine. No problem. I have a spiffy all-in-one home office machine, so I just put it on the flatbed and hit copy.

Hmmm. That didn't go well. Before I was a quarter of the way through the copy the paper had jammed.

I looked in where the paper fed through and quickly found the culprit. A pen had been poked into the paper feed and was now lying horizontally just where it would do the most harm. My hand being much larger than the hand that (undoubtedly) stuck it in there, I couldn't reach it, although I cut the back of my hand trying.

Well, what are children for, if not to fix the messes they have made, right? My oldest was easily able to reach in and pull the pen out.

Problem solved! Back to copying!

Hmmm. Not yet. When I hit the copy button the machine just made rude noises at me and flashed that there was a paper jam.

I checked everything I knew how to open and couldn't see anything, so I went to the manufacturer's website to see if there was anything else I could open (I love the internet! Remember when we had to call and wait for days or weeks for the mail to arrive if we wanted a copy of a repair manual?)

Yes! There was another port. I unplugged the printer from everything so that I could turn it around and upside down, and opened my last chance.

There it was, the real cause of my paper jam - a ramen noodles seasoning packet.

This would never happen in a real office.