Manifesto for the Guardians of Time.



I would like to propose a theory that the profession of 'writer,' in terms of one who makes his survival with transcriptions of real or imaginary events, is an undertaught and underappreciated profession.

It is difficult to learn the craft, difficult to understand the craft, and many times more difficult to apply the craft. By craft, I mean the learned skill of articulating oneself through written words, rather than our instinctual method: speech.

Before I continue, I would like to discuss the word, "Talent," because I feel that the word is misused by many people, and furthermore that the misuse of this word displays something telling about present-day culture and preceptions of "writers."

Talent is a slippery word. The word's origins tie to units of currency and weight, but the most commonly used modern-day usage of the word is: "The natural endowments of a person," or, "a special, often creative or artistic aptitude."

It is interesting that this word's origins are in Ancient Greece, but that is the subject of another discussion entirely, so let's go back to my point about modern talent.

Talent is imaginary. There are instincts, learned behaviors, skills, physical prowess, and mental capability. There are no talents in this world of humans. None of us are born better able to paint with a brush and dyes better than the others. A person that argues for talents in this framework is undoubtedly wrong.

The ability to articulate something using a brush and carefully applied colors is not inborn. If it is not inborn, then it must be learned. Homo Sapiens, for all of the altogether surprising things they have done, do not have abstract things like science and art and oration hard-wired to their genes. This DOES NOT HAPPEN.

What does happen is this:

The range of genetic mutation in a species with over six billion living members is rather large. Every organism, including this prolific creature we are discussing, has instincts hard-wired to its brain chemistry influencing genes. These instincts are behaviors that increase its chances at survival.

Natural Selection has not had enough TIME since our speciation to create "Talents," in the way we describe them.

We do have instincts, which could be likened to talents, but they are NOT aesthetically pleasing in the way that we infer meaning from a "talent."

Your instincts, if you can't think of any, are probably much like mine.

I eat when I am hungry, and generally don't give it more thought than this: I'm hungry. Where is some food?

I hope you can follow me on this, because this first point is necessary for my argument. The word talent, as it is used in everyday speech, is a misnomer, and altogether illusory.

Everything humans learn to do that involves articulating their opinions is a learned skill, excepting body language and speech (though language is a learned skill, our brains are engineered to learn a language for vocal communication, which dictates that a genetic disposition for vocal communication exists).

A painter described as "talented" is actually just "practiced" or "skilled."

Good, I hope you're coming with me on that.

Now, since we have realized that there is no innate disposition for writing (Though I will concede that a human with an exeptional memory would make a good writer once (s)he learns the craft, this is different from an inborn ability that directly correlates to writing itself.), we immediately wonder why there are great writers.

They are very skilled. The human brain has an immense amount of space for learned skills. With time, patience, and desire to articulate something, the ability to articulate it will emerge. A human may not understand exactly how he or she has learned how to write well, but he or she will do it.

Of course, if you've never had a doubt as to whether or not you possess the raw brainpower necessary for writing, then you probably don't have it. The ability to doubt oneself on a level uncompromised by ego is a difficult proposition for Homo Sapiens, because our brains are not meant to do it on a regular basis. For all the sophistication of a Homo Sapien brain, it is not wired to consider things objectively. Everything we process through our over-evolved thinking organ is filtered in terms of our sense of "self."

Is it possible to think objectively? Yes, I think it is possible to judge oneself on a scale that is not relative. It is just difficult, and requires active concentration.

Enough of this though, my concerns involving Homo Sapien thought are for another post also.

The point is this: The modern conception of talent impedes the teaching of a craft like writing. If students are seen as either "talented" or "not talented", meaning that most students just don't have the predispositions for writing, then students are being judged incorrectly.

To better understand the way writing is taught in our culture, which will allow us to better understand what is cataclysmically wrong with writing in our culture, we must first know what a "writer" is.

A writer is not a storyteller. A storyteller can be a writer, but a writer is not limited to telling stories. Much like a square must always be a rectangle, but a rectangle need not be a square, writers can write anything they wish.

A "writer" in the purest since, is a champion of time. More specifically, a champion of his path through time. A writer makes it his duty to transcribe at least one set of thoughts among the chaotic babble of all thoughts. As infinite as time is, it is a thankless and difficult occupation.

It must be done. For our species. Writers are protectors of a specific portion on the infinite timeline. They are keepers of history, but they are not historians. Our historians memorize baroque events and dead names among the seething chaos of life in the universe. A writer believes that there are important ideas that must be remembered, because (s)he knows that events, locations, and names fade quickly from existence.

Some ideas must not be forgotten. To take that idea, and really run with it, a writer has to forget that everything is forgotten on a long enough timeline. A writer must know that what he does is almost certainly futile, and he must know that he will never know if he was successful. Not financially sucessful, though he most likely will be a financial failure, but successful in his duty to protect the timeline he was assigned.

Just because it already happened, does not mean that it isn't still there. It's just behind us, and we lack the ability to move freely in the dimension where our memories, and futures reside.

As a writer, you try to preserve a consciousness for as long as possible. Why you want to, is anyone's guess. All I know is that there are some reasons that you will want to stay away from. The first is money. Second: Fame.

These are things you may acquire as a skilled writer, but if they are the goal, then the entire enterprise is empty and meaningless. And the trouble is that you will never know, straight up, whether you can do it or not.

You have to commit yourself beforehand, and that is the scariest thing in the world.

Herein lies one of the first difficulties with teaching "writing" to "writers." This art of writing is elusive and difficult to grasp ahold of. Most people who learn to write well are unaware of how they learned it. As a result, our only teachers of writing offer bland insights on how they learned to write, but they did this entirely on their own. Already, upon your first instruction, a deviation takes place in regards to the specific teacher, and it should be clear that Homo Sapiens (ie, the teacher) can only teach what he learned as a student. The trouble with teaching students in the way that you learned (if you learned on your own) is that it's possible the way you discovered only works for you.

The difference in learning from a teacher and learning on one's own is merely the difference between knowing and doing. When you learn a skill by stumbling around in the dark until you know your way around, then you are learning to do it. Anytime something is passed on from a teacher to a student, it is known. Teacher says to student,"When x happens, do y," and the student knows what to do for one contingency. The teacher must separately instruct the student how to do the thing they understand so well.

Let me explain. If a teacher learned something from another teacher, he learned through instruction. He consciously controlled his mind to accomplish a certain end. With skills like writing (in terms of a craft), a human is entirely capable of doing it right without knowing consciously the right way to do it. If someone who doesn't *know* how they became a skilled writer, because they taught themselves, teaches an auditorium full of students, there is one single worthwhile thing he can tell the students:

You need to write and read a lot to learn how to write.

The people that write this way have no idea how to instruct anyone else on the craft(writing), because they accomplished it by making mistakes and seeing them.

One would think that, teaching a craft as vital as writing eloquently would be of paramount importance to Homo Sapiens (being that writing is our way of keeping the history of our species since we began writing).

Also: In a teacher/student relationship, two things must take place for anything beneficial to happen. The teacher must agree to teach the student, and the student must agree to learn. As it is a craft, the student should submit his request for teaching, and the master artisan should accept or deny the apprenticeship. This is not a folley of the teachers themselves, but the system which governs teaching. When the power to teach or not teach an individual student does not lie with the teacher, a problem arises. Simplified, it is not a complex problem, though it has far-reaching implications. If a teacher must accept students that cannot learn the craft, much like a blacksmith forced to accept a student with fingers that cannot swing a hammer effectively, the teacher will become frustrated with students that clearly cannot gain expertise in the craft. This frustration, if not viewed objectively, will transfer to the other students until the teacher applies it to all of them.

But to continue: In order to teach a skill, you must know how it is learned. If your teacher does not know a universal way to communicate the learning process, there is very little a student can glean.

Now, the format for writing instruction is also a detriment to the actual duty of the occupation. In order to gain the right students, the instructor must know that writing is a thankless duty that some of us must take it upon ourselves to do.

The fact is that we know it is a useless attempt. Shakespeare will be forgotten one day. Everything fades until it doesn't exist in a given timeline. Let me say it a different way: As our universe experiences the dimension of time as a single-direction journey, and as we experience ourselves moving only one direction within time, there are beginnings and ends of everything. Everything save the dimension itself.

As a writer, you must know that your efforts are futile, but you must also know that you still have to do it. You still have to record it. You still have to get it down in a format that will outlast you.

Why?

I don't know, but I do know that many Sapiens before me have done it when they must have known it was futility defined. I hope that many Sapiens after me will do it, even though they know it is pointless. This is not to say that they will find inspiration through my words, because that would imply success as a "writer," and success is never confirmed for us.

We build upon the shoulders of the timelines ending before our own begin, and through that, through each individual writer that does his duty to time, we can hope to start forming something that doesn't end.

This isn't about money or perfection, because both are tantalizing mirages. This is about each person doing their part for the better.

And this I say to you:

Tell me your stories.
I will be the lore-keeper.
I will be the defender of our mutal timelines.
I realize that I cannot defeat time, but I know that if those like me continue to do what they have done, we will create something real and lasting. Something without end, as long as we can wake up our brothers before they kill us all.

That, I think, might be worth it.

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This post isn't finished. - Nate