RANDOM ACTS OF LANGUAGE:Writers, Books and Everything

By Nick DiChario

            Donald Culross Peattie writes in An Almanac for Moderns (Putnam, 1935), “But of what use, pray, is man? Would anybody, besides his dog, miss him if he were gone?”

            Well, hell, no, I seriously doubt it. In fact, most creatures would breathe a massive sigh of relief. Imagine, murderous Man, gone for good. “Phew,” sings the barn swallow, “He talked too much anyway.”

            It sure puts this writing thing in perspective, though, doesn’t it? Why do we write? What’s so all-fired, gosh-darned important about it? Does anybody care? And who will give a rat’s buttocks when we’re gone? Take my advice, if you want to keep writing for whatever reason, don’t think too long or hard about any of these questions. In the end it doesn’t matter why we do it as long as it makes us happy, and it doesn’t matter if anybody else cares as long as we do. It’s the “others” who take the fun out of our writing, isn’t it? The rejecters, the criticizers, the why-are-you-wasting-your-timers? and the I-told-you-soers. Forget about them, and remember who you are. You are a writer, so if you want to despair about something, despair about all those folks who don’t write, poor sods that they are, and wonder what mental insufficiency it is that prevents them from doing it. The fear-of-failures, the we’re-too-busyers, the I-could-do-it-if-I-put-my-mind-to-it people. Who needs ‘em?

            We are the moral minority. We are the treasures, the jewels, the cherished artifacts. We are those who write. When we humans finally vanish from the face of the earth, if anything at all survives us it will be our words, our paintings on the cave walls, so to speak. So let us think highly of ourselves, comrades, for no one else will.

            That’s what my column will be about. It will be about celebrating writers and writing. It will be about “us” not them. We’ve already given them enough of the world. We’ve already handed them the keys to the universe. Here, in this forum, we matter and they don’t. The “others” are on the outside looking in. Here, writers and writing make a difference, even if it’s only among the cherished few.

            So, much in the spirit of Douglas Adams who wrote so charmingly about Life, the Universe and Everything, my column will be about Random Acts of Language: Writers, Books and Everything, and in each column I’ll discuss the kinds of stuff that for some odd reason writers are interested in and nobody else much cares about. I hope you will join me. Feel free to respond to my column or not, ask questions or not, agree or disagree or not, or just plain fall asleep in front of your computer screen. I’m fairly liberal-minded and easily swayed by logical, rational, and persuasive arguments of the type I’m prone to read but not necessarily write. From this column, I warn you, do not expect too much common sense, continuity, or connectivity. I only hope that sooner or later I will speak to you in some significant way.

Along with being a writer, I’m the very proud owner of an independent bookstore called The Write Book and Gift Shop (http://www.Writebookandgifts.com) located in the quaint little village of Honeoye Falls, NY. If you believe in the sanctity of literature I hope you will support your local independent book dealer. If you don't have one near you, I will gladly order any book you like and offer you free shipping. Please consider this option before feeding more money into the muddy engines of the corporate conglomerates. You know the ones I’m talking about. The ones who care more about their coffee, their Web sites, and their bottom lines than they do about you, the books they sell, or the authors who write them.

So begins a wonderful journey.
I look forward to writing to you.
I look forward to sharing.

Nick DiChario lives and writes in upstate New York. He has published science fiction, fantasy, mainstream and mystery stories in several magazines and anthologies, including the The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century, The Mammoth Book of Miniscule Fiction, Crime Through Time, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and The Year’s Best Science Fiction. Nick has been nominated for the John W. Campbell Award, the Hugo Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He has taught creative writing at universities, and he is the fiction editor of HazMat Review (http://www.hmlr.org), a literary journal that encourages socially and politically aware poetry and prose. Magic Feathers, a collection of his collaborative short stories with Hugo and Nebula award-winning author Mike Resnick, has been published by Obscura Press. Nick is also the owner and operator of the Writer OnLine official bookstore, The Write Book and Gift Shop, Inc. (http://www.Writebookandgifts.com)