My beautiful tomato-face

has departed this world to take her place

amongst the stars that shine from space

I’ll miss her humor, warmth, and grace

This is the official website of T.R Whittier, and Independent Literary Artist, Fictionista, and Everyday Chick who is incapable of living a life less literary.

      Each person, I have always felt, is unique. Each collective mass of body, mind, and spirit is, inarguably, an unparalleled example of individualism. For some time now, however, I have begun to spot patterns in people, clusters of characteristics that cause individuals to be lumped into groups. The more people I meet, the more evident these patterns become.

       Among the most intriguing of these patterns is a person’s response to and his/her relationship with art. On the one side, we have the Creators, those who see beauty in every turn of phrase, in every delicate brushstroke, in every captured image. The Creators are nature’s artists, people who look at the world around them in a way that most others cannot see, and who try to reflect it back to them in a beautiful, distinctly different manner.

       On the other side, we have the Destroyers. The Destroyers are natural critics, those dark souls whose greatest pleasure is to take something beautiful and tear it apart, picking and pulling away pieces of it until nothing remains except a bare, ashen skeleton. Destroyers, for some unknown reason, seem have an easier time in this platform of life. They outnumber Creators significantly, gathering around us like sharks in search of fresh blood, trying to snarl and snap at us, eager to suck out our creative juices, to leave us cold, dejected, and lifeless – much like themselves.

       But the wonderful thing about being a Creator is that we are not easily destroyed. Certainly, they can rip us to pieces. They can poke holes in us, call us names, and defile the beauty that we create. Such acts of needless abuse can hurt our feelings, maim our spirits, and damage our souls. But the pain is temporary. Creators have the power, the gift, to create. It is what we were created to do. And by continuing to create, we can defeat the Destroyers. 

       Beauty will always win.

For some time now, the idea presented in this article has been on my mind: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/jul/29/artists-day-job-feature

It’s a problem that all artists- writers, painters, filmmakers, musicians, ect, ect, ect- have experienced for centuries: we want to share our work with as many people as possible, but we also need to eat. It’s easy to forget, when a person watches a great film, hears a beautiful song, or reads an amazing novel, that the work of art that you have just consumed was created by another human being, another person who needs to pay just as many bills as you pay, whose family is just as challenging to support as yours is, and who deserves a paycheck for their work just as much as you do.

This is not to say that I am against the awesome literary revolution that is free books. I, like every other
reader on the planet, adore free books (“e” or otherwise). When I browse through all the free content on Wattpad, and other websites with a similar philosophy, I get excited. But, I can’t help thinking: while the artists, those hard-working souls who have shared their beautiful gifts with the world, gain nothing (except exposure, and perhaps, writing practice) from sites such as these, the CEO Fatcats who are running them are
making millions of dollars. Once again, it seems like the artist is getting the short end of the stick

Money, as usual, messes everything up.

Providing artists with a grant to fund their project while they are working on it might be an excellent solution to this dilemma. (sure, it goes against the capitalist ideal, but it ensures, at least that artists will be provided with some monetary compensation for their hard work, unlike the current model we use, which seems to rely strongly on luck and relentless marketing).

It is, methinks, worth a try.

One of the most frustrating and annoying aspects about being a person who loves to write is that other people never seem to understand why we enjoy it so much.

“It’s such a waste of time,” they say. Or, even worse: “Why bother writing fiction? Nobody  reads anymore, anyway, not when they could just watch a movie” It is enough to make any sensitive, intelligent person feel tempted to sink into a mire of depression. Perhaps this lack of literary love is one of the reasons Hemingway drank so much.

And so, people like me, who enjoy writing and tend to be on the shy side anyway, often hide their art. We listen respectfully as our friends and neighbors boast about the latest painting they’ve completed, or about their stunning performance in the amateur theatre production at the local town hall. We blink our eyes politely, trying hard to remain expressionless, when some fool trashes the stellar bestseller of the moment, declaring that it’s “easy” to write a novel, and that if they weren’t so busy being a VIP at their corporate desk job, they would have no trouble writing the next Great American Novel. Yeah, right, we think, inwardly rolling our eyes. And my dog poops diamonds.

We are the writers in disguise, the rare few who would rather spend our time actually engaging in the craft rather than talking, or rather, bragging about it. 

We are the ones who labor over our keyboards and notebooks, bringing forth beauty, stirring up emotions, and creating life from blank pages.

Most people will never see through our disguises, and we are fine with that, because we are not the ones who want to be seen. We are the ones who want to, and will be, heard.

I’m a homebody — always have been, probably always will be. I feel most comfortable, most like myself, when I’m at home. It comes as no big surprise, then, that my best writing happens when I   am safely tucked away in the cozy cranny that is my house. 

Virginia Woolfe probably said it best: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” What she neglected to mention, however, is that a woman (or man for that matter, let’s not be sexist here) who writes fiction also needs time — and lots of it.

For people like me, who really love to write, finding the time to create fun plots and funny characters isn’t the problem. We write before, after, and sometimes during our day jobs, on the weekends, and even in the midst of a somewhat longer-than-usual trip to the bathroom. No, finding the time to write is not the problem at all. It’s finding the time to do anything besides writing that is the crux of concern.

Take for example, my own sweet “room of one’s own,” my lovely little apartment. It has served me well during my writing journey, offering me silent sanctuary and certain stability. I am fortunate enough, thanks to my position as a day job slave, to maintain the funds necessary to pay rent and to purchase all the little products and doo-dads (bleach spray, sponges, rubber plungers ect.) that are needed to keep the place ship-shape and Bristol fashion — except that I don’t.

And why? Because I’m a woman on a mission. I have a story, the first of many, to tell, to write. I don’t have time to clean. Virginia Woolfe would have been proud of me. That is, of course, assuming that she would not have been too busy being disgusted…

       Here in the Northern-most segment of the Northeast, the Spring Equinox has come and gone – and still we are buried in snow. We huddle in our houses, hunkered down in a period of extended-hibernation, waiting for the first sure sign of…something.

        In my day job, as an over-educated, well-paid slave, I convene with the other over-educated, well-paid slaves as we take care of our charges, watching them for the initial symptoms of…something.

     As I lose myself in the writing of my novel, however, I find that time slips by without my noticing it. Hour after hour passes too quickly, and instead of waiting/watching for something and finding nothing, I realize that I am actually doing something.

This doing is, I believe, the secret of happiness. When we, the fragile creatures known as human beings, dance too close to the precipice, that dividing line between waiting/watching and doing, we put ourselves in grave danger of falling off of it- of wasting our lives.

     
  An excess of watching and waiting can, if we’re not careful, be our undoing.

       A Blog. I, who have always been something of a luddite at heart, actually have a blog. It must be the future, but where are all the flying cars that “The Jetson’s” promised us?

       Seriously though, it was high time that I came out. I’m a writer, a Mad Scribbler actually, and, as you may have guessed, I like to write and scribble away madly. And so, because it is the future, I have now decided to spend a portion of my time scribbling away online. Offline, of course, I will still uphold my doppelgänger persona : the calm, cool, emotionally-neutral worker at a well-paying day job. One needs to do make these sacrifices in order to keep body and soul together – this one especially, as she loves eating. 

       And so, I must close the opening post of my blog. How sad, I was just beginning to get into this whole “living in the future” thing. But, don’t worry….I’ll be back (don’t say I didn’t warn you).