To Be Human
Over the past year, I've been asked to be the keynote speaker, a speaker, or a guest lecturer at various venues including the local university. Last fall I was asked to be the keynote speaker for the induction ceremony for Sigma Tau Delta, the prestigious English Honor's Society. I was asked to talk about my writing, and when you're addressing an auditorium filled with writers, that can be daunting and exhilarating all at once.
This spring, as they were last fall, two of my short stories are being taught in fiction writing classes at this same university, and the professors ask me to come guest lecture in their classes after the class reads my stories. I love doing this.
My talks/lectures/speeches are all off-the-cuff, unrecited and I don't use notes. So yesterday I spoke for a solid hour and fifteen minutes with no notes. That isn't including the 20 minutes after when students came around to ask more questions. I love to talk about writing, needless to say, but I love talking about how it relates to life even more.
I usually address various topics, but there is one thing, or a variant of one thing, I say to every group, in every talk. If they take anything away from what I have to say, I hope this would be it:
"In order to be a good writer, you must develop empathy and compassion. I submit to you that if you don't, you will fail as a writer. I also submit that you will most assuredly fail as a human being."
I believe this with everything I am.
Practicing empathy and compassion is just that--a practice. At least for me it is. It's something I must do consciously and with intention. My default setting, as with most people, is to be utterly self-centered. I find that I only feel peaceful and right with myself and the world when I come at things with empathy and compassion. It's as though practicing those things gives me a certain freedom, a certain liberation, from negativity and feelings of being out of control.
So that's what I have to offer you today.
I hope it was worth the read. Oh, and for the record, my speeches are usually quite a bit more entertaining and colorful than this blog post. At least PG-13-colorful. FYI.
