Michael J. Walsh

The Truth is Where You FInd It

I wonder how many of us think of comfort when we read an author’s work, or when we create something of our own. While I maintain that personal experiences are the richest cache from which to reflect. I would like to go one step further and suggest that it is the author’s ability to put his readers at ease with authority, that informs the effective strategies of writing through such experience. It starts with consistency. Consistency breeds muscle memory, and that can be fine-tuned, and thus applied to any challenge or surroundings a writer may suddenly find himself.

This has a great deal to do with what is referred to as rhetorical action. What I am suggesting is that when a writer’s mind is in the right frame, the power of the rhetorical emphasis can be extracted from the fiber of introspective writing. When I am in my writer’s place, my mind is focused. My heart intent on producing a written document that is honest and presentable.

They say that Hemingway wrote standing up, steadfast against his bedroom typewriter for precisely this reason. In the briefest of moments when the delicate, unformed thoughts of some draft were still wafting around in his consciousness, the essence could be captured before the inspiration could  evaporate into the ether of a typical Key West afternoon. When the mood strikes us, we have to be ready. Or, more to the point, we must be comfortable with our preparation and capable of receiving the wisdom that our experiences reveal to us. While being in the right place and time to faithfully record them.

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There is another form of comfort. It is the kind that comes from familiarity. Many men have braved the heights of mountains, or risked the sands of deserts, or the briny sea in search of sublime truths that would validate some part of their world. Never has one confronted the reality of their world more than when faced with the very truth that defines it. And, never was that endeavor served more faithfully than through local guidance. The people or artifacts from places, that shape or define those worlds. It is possible to know a thing perhaps better than most, but nothing can compete with the practical knowledge gained from those who came before – those who lived the experience every day. Nothing speaks with more integrity than succor from the very place unto which our curiosity leads us. Any good journalist will tell you that. So, the inspiration doesn’t come from a template, or a crude methodology, or from Starbucks. That is the discipline. The routine. The simulation.

True inspiration comes from being immersed, and embedded in the places where the stories originate.

So, what am I trying to say? Go forth and live your inner truth. Don’t wait until it is safe, or clear, or free from inconvenience, confusion, or discomfort. Strike, while the iron is hot, and the blood in your veins still courses with the heat of passion, inspiration and the incurable sense that if you do not go forth immediately you may die! As the poet Dylan Thomas once said, “Do not go quietly into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light!”