Writing is a Lifestyle

'We write to taste life twice, in a moment and in retrospect' -  Anais Nin. 

A lifestyle is the typical way of life of an individual, group, or culture.

Wikipedia defines lifestyle as the interests, opinions, behaviours, and behavioural orientations of an individual, group, or culture. 

The ability for you to create things that never existed is the same as you being a god. You give life to none existing things. Although sometimes you are not being paid for these things the passion leads you, the drive makes you want to write more and more without stopping even if your hands ache. People criticize you negatively; make a mockery of what you have written but you keep pushing on because you have made it part of you, a blossoming lifestyle. You don’t really care what they say about; you only want to pass a vital message through this lifestyle called writing. 

You the creator, you make non- living things come to life. You the maker; you establish things from its fragments and give those things hope. You never know the power you have within you. I don’t think you know yourself. You don't know you have the ability to give and take life, you never know you can kill and make alive. You don’t know your worth in the world and that is why you allow people to kick you around.  You never knew what tomorrow has in store for you. Have you forgotten you have a lifestyle to protect? In this pleasurable world, do you know you were made to change some certain things? To give opportunities to those who deserve it?

Have you looked at yourself in the mirror and told yourself sweet words as a writer that tells the end from the beginning and the beginning from the end?  Do you know that this lifestyle chose you, you didn’t choose it? Do you know that many who criticize you want to be like you? Why do you fear?  You were afraid yesterday, you were conquered yesterday, you were abused yesterday, but you never gave up because you created this lifestyle to be a writer. Because you created another YOU from the previous ones they used to see. Why are you shattered? You were cheated, you were battered, but you never gave in yesterday. 

Why are you frustrated? Your works were rejected on several occasions but, you keep pushing on this lifestyle you carved for yourself. Writing is an endless lifestyle that stays on after you have gone into the abyss.  Because you have to write the books that need to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for adults, then you write it for children. I never knew you to be this weak, yes, I know writers are stronger than the foundation of this world. Be strong there!

If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then life will be as careless as it is written.  Ernest Hemingway once wrote that all good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.  

And Albert Camus wrote that the purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself. As a writer with a lifestyle and purpose, the more you leave out, the more you highlight what you live in. Never you judge but try to understand.

“Great writers are indecent people they live unfairly saving the best part for people. Good human beings of the world so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal if you read this after I am dead it means I made it.” Charles Bukowski

“A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends” Friedrich Nietzsche

“The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies” Ray Bradbury.

It’s never been a better time to be a writer or aspire to become one in a country like ours but those of us that have this lifestyle of writing chosen by us will keep pushing. If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. Create your space, a lifestyle that has never been created. Be deadly to find the right place to do that, either writing something worth reading or do something worth writing that is the lifestyle.
 

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader “Robert Frost.

Read, read, and read. Read everything--- trash, classic, good and bad, and see how they do it.  Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. 

If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it is not, throw it out of the window “William Falkner.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. You can shake off everything as you write, your pains, sorrow, agony, loss of loved ones, abuse; and disappointment and then, rebirth your courage and wit. Yes, that is what the lifestyle entails. 

Don’t get discouraged with how you live this lifestyle as people will always talk. Don’t look at the dumb side of it but the positive aspect of you living as an immortal after death welcomes you home.

Live your life to the fullest and write those things that needed to be written to satisfy the curiosity of those that will come after us.

Writing is a lifestyle and not a game of trial.

By John Chizoba Vincent

chizobavincent@gmail.com