Day Jobs of the Poets

It wasn't until quite recently that I realized so very few writers make (made) their living as writers--that they, instead, toil(ed) daily amid the muck and filth of the world--and that they use(d) their writing to express themes and ideas that they encounter(ed) out in the world where everyone else resides.

I guess I had this impression that writers were somehow separated from the world, and I guess I thought that the good writer found his or her story entirely in the imagination (I read a lot of fantasy), but I've begun to recognize that good writing, the kind of writing that affords a reader the opportunity to say, "hey, that happened to me," or, "I thought I was the only one who saw things that way," is born, not strictly from the imagination, but from our experiences; the characters we put into our works are representations of those whom we encounter every day; the places where these works are set, even if it's too subtle for the reader to notice, are places that we have all been.

I am trying to say, perhaps, that we each have our lives--readers and writers, alike--and those lives, the choices we make that ultimately produce our perceptions of the world around us, become the very essences of our creativity in both the creation and consumption of art.

Whether we choose to feel tortured or favored, we shouldn't forget to recognize that there is a poem, or a story, or a play, or a picture in there somewhere.