Edmundson begins the chapter “To Do Something” by discussing the “odd affiliations” that writers have and the lack of commonality they have with those in the professional world. A reference to a short story by Thomas Mann is used to emphasize how socially awkward Edmundson claims writers are. Writers, he says, become writers because nothing else in life has worked out. They are said to have a kinship with vagabonds because of their ability to just let go of the anxieties of life and go for it. Real writers are suggested to be outcasts to some degree hoping, as many writers do, to explain themselves. In the process of writing, individuals can find that the world is much more strange than they had imagined. Jack Kerouac is noted as an author that saw and focused on these everyday things that happen in the world. He is compared to what Edmundson believes to be the outline of a writer—someone that did not fit in with lawyers or managers and wrote because there was likely nothing else in the world he could do to fit in. Like Kerouac, Edmundson says writers want others going through the same pain of not belonging to breathe easier.
Writers can and have indeed had odd affiliations throughout history. Some of which, Edmundson argues, cannot be that of doctors, lawyers, or any other professional. He also claims that writers have no interest in salesmen or brokers. Edmundson can speak for himself on these matters.
I came into this book as a student in a senior writing class confused about the career choice I want to make upon graduating. I had no presuppositions about writers in general nor did I think writers could be lumped into the heap that Edmundson puts them in.
Writers are not always as they are made out to be by Edmundson in this chapter—I don’t think that they are even frequently like this. Edmundson has a tight, pretentious, and opinionated mold that all writers, in his mind, should comfortably slip into. If they don’t fit, he or she must not be a “real writer” with valid thoughts and ideas.
I have a very strong opinion of the first thought presented in Edmundson’s chapter “To Do Something.” Writers not only can associate, successfully mingle, and befriend a professional, but they can become one as well. The idea pressed throughout these pages is that most all writers are misfits that have failed in all other areas of life and have turned to writing for no other reason than to work out why they have become what they are and why they’re in the position they are in. If a writer doesn’t happen to fall into this category, Edmundson says that, “Such writers exist and they write novels about the suburbs and live in the suburbs on occasion, too” (140).
Edmundson constantly places his own experience on a golden pedestal and considers no other individual to be capable of having a human experience apart from his own. As a writer, with admittedly much less experience than Edmundson, I have an entirely different outlook on the world of writing.
Writers can be social, writers can be professionals, and writers can be outcasts because, like everyone else in the world, writers are human. Human emotion is endlessly complex which is why immediate flaw can be found in Edmundson’s chapter. Writers are put in a box because, I am convinced, Edmundson himself is trapped in one. He has spent too much time, as discussed in the chapter “To Learn to be Alone,” alone in a room. Ideas formed in this room were too organic to himself with so little regard for others that he wrote an entire book, and two others I will not be reading, about the reasons he has written and bold enough to reduce the act of writing to just merely doing something. Something—writing just because there is nothing left because boredom has set in, because one is too socially inept to carry on a meaningful conversation. Writing, in Edmundson’s chapter, is a cliché that only the world’s helpless, hopeless, and vagabonds do.
Writers fit in most of all of the time. I would go as far as to say that writers fit in more often than not. Even people who seem to fit Edmundson’s bill of awkward social outcast can find themselves fitting in quite well. George R. R. Martin, if I am being equally as generalizing as Edmundson, seems to be someone who would hole himself up in a bookshelf lined cabin and hide from the cruel world that just isn’t accepting of people like him. If Martin were to fit into the mold Edmundson creates, he would feel disconnected from the world, unable to connect with others, and positive that the world not would be interested in hearing what he has to say. When, in reality, much of the media consuming world is terrified he is doing too many interviews (socializing) and will die before he finishes his ever popular Game of Thrones series.
Furthermore, J. K. Rowling can also be contrasted with the small world that Edmundson forces writers to exist in. Ms. Rowling is an incredibly active individual on social media. She frequently takes to Twitter to express her opinions on various issues, both political and social. Rowling is a social media superstar as well as the renown author of a best-selling book series that will remain a classic among all ages for years to come.
Just today, I looked through Rowling’s Twitter and was met with three hot-button posts. The first was a retweet discussing a rape clause from a Scottish labor union, a major accusation another celebrity made about racism, and another of a very heartfelt video of a eulogy for a victim of last week’s heartbreaking terrorist attack in Paris that resulted in the death of a police officer. Not only does J. K. Rowling make a point to get others’ voices out there, she certainly states her own opinion as well.
Just this week, Rowling took to Twitter again voicing her opinion on labor unions. It is so moving to see an individual pursue something that he or she loves and become successful enough to have such a strong voice and heart for others. Edmundson’s mold of a writer is shattered when looking at someone like J. K. Rowling. Edmundson’s writer would certainly not take to social media giving notice to millions of followers about the problems in orphanages around the globe. Rather, he would be holed up, unaware of the world around him, wallowing in self-pity, staring at four white walls praying to something for inspiration to come.
Writers can also be professionals too. Think of law, a field I have been considering myself. Attorneys are very well educated individuals that spend much of their career either reading or writing. For each case, an attorney is required to draft a brief for the other party and judge outlining their argument. At what point does one’s subject matter become too scholarly to be considered a writer? A lawyer doesn’t just write “to do something.” Instead, they write with a very focused purpose. Much of a law practitioner’s job is research, something vital for English and scholarly writing.
I have personal experience with law and the volume of documents that are produced by attorneys. This past summer, I had the opportunity to intern with a district circuit judge. I consider my internship a unique experience in that I not only received briefs from attorneys involved in a single case or one attorney’s cases for the summer, but I got each briefing, exhibit list provided before trial, and witnessed the process of a ruling behind chambers. I did this for each case the Judge had over the summer. I gleaned from this internship that attorneys and judges are not only professionals but are very fine technical writers as well.
Each brief I encountered this summer had a thread of similarity: a well formed and thoughtful thesis statement. Without the thesis, the attorney’s argument would not be nearly as strong and it would certainly not have a focus. I did not realize just how important it is for attorneys to have a firm grasp on writing until this summer. The best cases I sat in on during my internship came from the lawyers with the most thorough and well planned briefings.
In Edmundson’s world, writers have no desire to be around professionals. In the real world, writers and professionals coexist daily. Oftentimes too, writers are indeed professionals. It does not lessen one’s status as a “real writer” if that individual does not feel akin to vagabonds seen roaming the streets and it certainly doesn’t make one less of a writer if the individual is successful. What Edmundson’s chapter lacks is the ability to see the world of writing as it is. Writing is not meant to be a place for only lonely, hopeless people with nowhere left to go in life, but rather it is a place anyone can go to for escape, expression, or even their career.
Works Cited
Edmundson, Mark. “To Do Something.” Why Write? Bloomsbury, 2016, pp. 137-45.
Edmundson, Mark. “To Learn to be Alone.” Why Write? Bloomsbury, 2016, pp. 121-27.
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