A Quote by Jesmyn Ward
It's very hard to deal with true subject matter, especially when you're writing about such weighty issues.
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Some of the subject matter is a little less weighty. When we were writing for Mr. Show, we were talking about how is this going to stand up to the test of time. Every little piece had to be this brilliant comedy jewel.
There are so many burning issues to be dealt with that it's completely understandable and natural that a character is struggling with these issues themselves. In that struggle, you inform the audience. The thing about this writing is that it's very easy to learn. Good writing always is.
Fantasy is usually considered an escape, but it's also a way to deal with weighty real-world issues from a safe distance and in a context where you usually have some kind of power that you don't have in real life.
Any writer who has difficulty in writing is probably not onto his true subject, but wasting time with false, petty goals; as soon as you connect with your true subject you will write.
We have to deal with issues like inequality, we have deal with issues of economic dislocation, we have to deal with peoples fears that their children won't do as well as they have. The more aggressively and effectively we deal with those issues, the less those fears may channel themselves into counter-productive approaches that pit people against each other.
If the book is finished—published and on the shelf—I do not think of revising it. But if I'm not finished psychologically with characters, they will recur, either as themselves or as new, slightly altered manifestations, and their same issues will reappear. It's a matter of the subject and emotional investment and my own obsessive thinking about various issues It's an unconscious process. To say that a single story is not done isn't quite true. A story can be finished and judged successful or not by somebody else, but if the issue is not done for me, I can count on its reappearance.
These are old issues. Female power, misogyny, the treatment of women, how you make meaning in the world. And these are all issues that I've been thinking about and writing about for a very long time.
Bringing up issues that are hard to deal with is a challenge for me, and I think that's what draws me to song writing.
It's hard to come up with a 'quote' about myself. Perhaps I could say that most of my writing has been concerned with understanding between people. Whether of different races, or religions, or even in the same family I tried in my books... to deal with the subject of understanding the other fellow.
We're brought up to believe in a fairytale-romance sort of way that true love is out there and true loves don't care about what you look like and stuff, just what's down inside. And that's probably true, but what's also true, sadly, is that true loves are very rare and very hard to find.
When you start talking about same-sex marriage, you start talking about abortion, and I think those issues are very very important and very interesting and very right for us to talk about, but when we allow those issues to cannibalize all other issues we find ourselves homeless while we debate about it.
I'm writing a poem right now about a nose. I've always wanted to write a poem about a nose. But it's a ludicrous subject. That's why, when I was younger, I was afraid of [writing] something that didn't make a lot of sense. But now I'm not. I have nothing to worry about. It doesn't matter.
We've always been huge fans of the Dixie Chicks. They talked about subject matter that people didn't necessarily want to talk about and made people pay attention to issues.
That is the thing about being a writer; your subject matter may not stay your subject matter if you break their trust by revealing personal and editorialized information about them.
I found when I started getting serious about writing music, that my writing was country songs. It was basically country subject matter, country melodies and simple chord changes.
The subject matter that I am really spending my time on has become an acceptable subject matter. Living, lifestyle, family, is now in the forefront of interest in America, and I've just stuck with it. I mean, I've been doing this for years, and I never got angry. I never said, you know, listen, I'm fighting for this subject. That wasn't my point. My point was to continue working in a subject matter, knowing full well that finally it would be recognized as a viable subject once again.
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