Tribute to William Zinsser

I've longed for some time to have a writing venue where I could simply be myself, not so much in secret, as in a diary, but more publicly. This urge to be better known and understood and to thereby make a difference, seems natural even for an introvert like me. This is the main reason I write at all.

I long to become not only more visible than I ever was in the crowd of siblings where I grew up but also in the world at large. This writing medium is a window into my thinking and into who I am and how I relate to a world that's going mad. Written words are a framework in which I've longed to view and describe the world and even to expostulate for the good of my soul. I'm so grateful to have the help of so many writers who have gone before me, pursuing the same objective, using the same medium and who, by their example and insights, are providing me so much help.

The writer William Zinsser has been more than a hero to me, for going on 20 years now, a whole generation, although I never met him. Two decades seem an appropriate time-slice given my natural father might have lived to Zinsser's age, had Nature not reclaimed my Dad when he was thirty-nine and I was sixteen. I can only imagine what our relationship could have been, had he lived. I've sought to meet a stand-in since my Dad's death, a surrogate I could look up to, an imaginary father, perhaps. Few men have measured up to my ideal but Zinsser tops my shortlist of imaginary "found parents." It would have been an honor to know him.

Today I visited the website dedicated to William Zinsser's remembrance. It became a sacred pilgrimage if ever I've made one. His most popular book (On Writing Well) has gotten me through the past fifteen years of self-development and independent study, with innumerable detours, that led to my writer's emancipation: the decision to dedicate myself, at long last, to the work I've wanted to do since I was far too callow to do it and to assume the writer's identity that I have longed to fill for a lifetime, and am now continually busy fulfilling. This is what I was actually born to do.

At the start of my transformation from engineer to writer, Zinsser's beloved On Writing Well was a godsend to a godless man. Now, as I realize that I have evolved into what I have longed to become, I'm groping toward what comes next, with unending self-expostulation and revision of mind and soul as I develop my craft and psyche as far as they can go during the years I have left.

I discovered glittering gems once more in his work this morning. Several new rubies jumped into my pocket as I paid a visit to his online memorial, reading through excerpts from his books. Some standouts seem especially relatable. So I pass their deep resonance onward. Some of his words seem to define who I am in some ways, both a past me and the new man I am becoming as I live out my final life stage. My main regret is that I didn't start writing seriously much sooner.

From William Zinsser’s Commencement Speech at Wesleyan University, 1988

"The sportswriter Red Smith was one of my heroes. Not long before his own death he gave the eulogy at the funeral of another writer, and he said, “dying is no big deal. Living is the trick.” Living is the trick. That’s what we’re all given one chance to do well...

"When I was teaching at Yale, the poet Allen Ginsberg came to talk to my students, and one of them asked him: 'Was there a point at which you consciously decided to become a poet?' And Ginsberg said: ‘It wasn’t quite a choice; it was a realization. I was 28 and I had a job as a market researcher. One day I told my psychiatrist that what I really wanted to do was to quit my job and just write poetry. And the psychiatrist said, 'Why not?' And I said, 'Well, what would the American Psychoanalytic Association say?' And he said, 'There’s no party line.' So I did." We’ll never know how big a loss that was for the field of market research. But it was a big moment for American poetry.

"There’s no party line.

"Good advice.

"You can be your own party line. If living is the trick, what’s crucial for you is to do something that makes the best use of your own gifts and your own individuality. There’s only one you. Don’t ever let anyone persuade you that you’re somebody else...

"In those eleven years [of being a freelance writer] I never wrote anything that I didn’t want to write. I’d like you to remember that. You don’t have to do unfulfilling work, or work that diminishes you. You don’t have to work for people you don’t respect. You’re bright enough to figure out how to do work that you do want to do, and how to work for people you do want to work for."

All these lessons I recognize, having lived through them each as the plot of my life unfolded: finding out how to work to the tune of my own best gifts; insisting on being who I am and not what others wanted me to be; not doing work I didn't want or work that would diminish me; not working for, or with, people I don't respect. Like Ginsberg, for me "It [writing] wasn’t quite a choice; it was a realization." Given before I fully realized what a profound change I had unconsciously made, I had written my third non-fiction book and started another one and also a memoir, as well as several short stories.

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From “Writing About Your Life”

"I think of intention as the writer’s soul. Writers can write to affirm and to celebrate, or they can write to debunk and destroy; the choice is ours. Editors may ask us to do destructive work for some purpose of their own, but nobody can make us write what we don’t want to write. We get to keep intention...

"I always write to affirm—or, if I start negatively, deploring some situation or trend that strikes me as injurious, my goal is to arrive at a constructive point. I choose to write about people whose values I respect and who do life-affirming work; my pleasure is to bear witness to their lives. Much of my writing has taken the form of a pilgrimage: to sacred places that represent the best of America, to musicians and other artists who represent the best of their art... 

"My mother came from a long line of devout Maine and Connecticut Yankees, and she thought it was a Christian obligation to be cheerful. It is because of her that I am cursed with optimism. The belief that I can somehow will things to go right more often than they go wrong—or to be an agent of God’s intention for them to go right—has brought many adjectives down on my head, none of them flattering: naive, credulous, simple-minded. All true. I plead guilty to positive thinking."

Though I relate things that are sad or even dreadful when that is the truth of the writing, on the other hand, I never post a basically negative review. Instead, when something is terminally dreadful, I simply won't write about it. Being positive in action is a main way for anyone to make a difference, to induce more sanity, peace, and truth into life. Affirming beauty affirms life itself.

Zinsser's last paragraph above echoes words I've spoken more than once, though without religious underpinnings. I refuse to posit deities because helping things go right more than they go wrong simply returns as a reward again and again. I, too, "plead guilty to positive thinking" because it re-creates what inspires it. I don't need a god to tell me this. It's patently obvious in the stream of existence when closely examined.

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From “The Writer Who Stayed”

"Tips can make someone a better writer but not necessarily a good writer. That’s a larger package--a matter of character. Golfing is more than keeping the left arm straight. Every good golfer is a complex engine that runs on ability, ego, determination, discipline, patience, confidence, and other qualities that are self-taught. So it is with writers and all creative artists. If their values are solid their work is likely to be solid."

All I was looking for this morning was the title of Zinsser's book on writing craft (Writing to Learn) because, having been aging as wine ages in cool darkness while cradled in hardwood, it's now time to exit the oaken cask of the past two decades, to pour myself into what-is-now, as well as possible but not yet realized. On Writing Well is one of the most influential books I've read and keep periodically re-reading. I'm not alone in revering it; whole generations do. In it, Zinsser teaches a secret beyond all possible tips:

"The life-changing message of On Writing Well is: simplify your language and thereby find your humanity."

I'd be grateful to gain even half that much wisdom by reading my next Zinsser book. I plunge into the unknown, striving to become all I can imagine while reflecting upon his insights. In his writings I've found a great soul, kind heart and a kindred spirit, a father- surrogate to respect and emulate and the best writing coach I could want.

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May I forever write to learn and keep learning to the end.

May I have the character of a good writer.

May my work be solid.

-- Joseph Riden

We Re-create Our World Continually

DO YOU CHOOsE THIs...?

Nature has contrived an interesting experiment in the human race. Being sentient, Homo Sapiens is the most powerful apex predator species and also the most dangerous yet to live. Because we're self-aware, we can choose to act from rational intelligence tempered by moral compassion. We can guide our collective course with consideration of probable consequences and restrain self-interest to responsible choices that lead to socially optimum results. Or we can serve self-interest alone with little regard to outcomes.

Creating and sustaining a livable world is up to us, me and you, and all the people of this Earth. How will this radical venture of human evolution work out in practice?

We have the choice to live by a practical, humanistic wisdom, day to day. The need to live well has never been more imperative given the present state of the world. Yet individual motivation has never been more tenuous than now, when we are beset by legions of distractions. Focus on the common good can make all the difference.

Our behavior may arise from awareness, though if tardy, choices become forced by life's urgent unfolding which biology teaches us is never static. Life continually expresses either entropy, balance, or syntropy, entropy's opposite. Humans have been doing steady syntropy for a few thousand years now. The shoulders of history's road are cluttered with remains of civilizations less advanced than ours. Will our collective actions ultimately opt for life or act out an inborn fatal flaw that leads to eventual mass destruction? Those are the real-world stakes in nature's human-sentience experiment. In a very real sense, everything rides on this cosmic roll of the dice.

We are the masters of our fate whether we heft our responsibility or ignore clear imperatives and lose ourselves in fleeting and unsatisfying gratifications, like shopping for things we don't need or fascination with conflict rituals like spectator sports and tabloid newscasts. Our collective self-mastery issue sets an inexorable rhythm for human evolution. It seems a never-ending drama. From the tragic lesson of Rapa Nui's status-driven tribal conflicts over scarce resources, to Findhorn's socio-spiritual experiments, human generations grope forward, guiding life to its best ends, or harmful results, and most often, unconsciously.

Our collective choices add up algebraically, on a mass scale, across continents, summing effects for centuries. Even the smallest choices accumulate into the planetary end result for the long haul, either contributing to growth, to equilibrium, or to decline. Enough is alright and enough is all wrong these days, to make obvious our problems and our opportunities.

Balances of many kinds are disrupted, globally. Human populations expand geometrically, indicating our species' basic success. But something is amiss, given our planet's largess, when the oceans become choked with plastic trash. We plan travel to Mars and beyond while we also grant control of nuclear weapons to leaders with questionable judgment because we fear loss of our safety, or possessions, wealth, or products, or even leisure diversions.

Our rockets might be useful for either space exploration or mass destruction. These opposite potentials make the glorious sentience trial run we're on so engaging because it's quite uncertain. Partial successes can drive ultimate failure unless astutely managed. So modern life plays out like a dystopic adventure novel.

Everything matters because nothing happens in isolation. As individuals, we each choose our path and the results accumulate, with each thought, with every breath, with any individual action. For the final sum to sustain healthy balance, enough of us must choose wisely from moment to moment and especially when behaviors have clear and foreseeable consequences.

How will we choose? Practicing awareness is not so much about recycling plastic as it's about selecting mature, humble, and morally upright world leaders who are also socially aware. We can pick leaders who act responsibly, who honor the common good, worldwide, rather than colluding across national borders to cause war and reap its profits.

We could select leaders who are not so compulsively lost in petty power-questing and personal wealth accumulation that they can't govern to inspire admiration and cooperation rather than envy, fear, and resistance. But first, our broken electoral systems need overhaul because in present regimes, billionaires (the new aristocracy) buy our elections and use their media control to mesmerize the masses into ratifying their preferences by how we vote and seal our fate to their advantage.

This is the most sophisticated and most successfully hidden-in-plain-sight form of mass predation yet devised. Election outcomes can be very accurately predicted according to which candidates receive the most in campaign contributions. There's only one rational way to interpret that fact. 

Monarchy hasn't ended. It has simply been reborn in different guise. Modern governments degrade functionally into oligarchies. It appears that cross-border collusion between them is becoming a trend that drives a new world order of accelerating decadence and decline.

Humankind could achieve a collective awareness that drives right action to create optimum lives in a natural world that remains in healthy balance and makes a fair and functional social order more possible than ever before. Or, like a parasite that consumes its host and then dies, we can act selfishly and destroy the very planet that sustains our kind, as all the species disappear, one by one, until we are the last beings to go. Rain falls on everyone the same.

The increasing stakes are becoming clearer. Arctic permafrost steadily thaws out as colluding billionaires get richer by the nanosecond and buy our elections while the middle class disappears. The resulting methane emissions will surpass all previous atmospheric pollution and more than double it. This is expected to propel our civilization into a colossal downfall, once more. How ironic that we may finally end in a cosmic, planetary fart.

You can stand at the edges of glaciers and on tundra riverbanks, right now, and watch the melt water gush forth as never before and the soft earth banks collapse into gas-generating pools yet environmental science is still being denied to support profits, as we avoid right action in the face of clear evidence. Continuing a behavior that shows no promise has been offered as a definition of insanity.

The asylums may be gone but the conditions they housed seem to be spreading in the general population. It shows up in acts like weirdly anonymous public shootings where there is no specific relationship between the murderers and the victims. That free-floating mass violence a symptom of a systemic disorder.

In a mind that loses rationality, sentience departs. Going to the dark side for narrow, short-term gain, or living practically in the light of expansive awareness: it's a personal choice and a critical one for our progeny and for our species' ultimate future.

The world we live in is the world we create. Our frontier is no longer an external, virgin wilderness that begs to be pillaged. Our limiting factor has become callous self-interest that dwells within our hearts and guides our leaders. Will Earth become a place where every person has all their primary needs met, where war becomes impossible, where populations stay in check, where individual wealth is voluntarily held within reasonable limits and unbridled greed becomes unknown? We can choose a planet where healthy environment is sustained for all living beings and predation of one human being upon another becomes a dim memory. But first we have to survive our present regime, and the greatest scams in history.

Will we choose to dwell in peace, prosperity, fulfillment and continual balance, or will our decadence and apathy become our undoing? These are choices we collectively make, in each moment we share on this Planet, with every breath, with any decision or action, no matter how seemingly small, unrelated or inconsequential. We "vote" moment to moment with every thought. The heart can become the mind's guide dog but you have to want it and do the training.

We learned everything social we need to know in kindergarten, including how to treat everyone as we would have others treat us, to play nice, to not fight, to rest when we're tired, to share with our friends and find our best means of self-expression. Then we live our lives through old age as if we never heard these most fundamental, most imperative truths. When we act selfishly, nothing beyond personal gain matters. If we act for the common good, the world becomes a safe and happy place for all living beings. The outcome of the human sentience-experiment turns on this pivot.

We choose our collective fate by how we live as we travel together in Earth's orbit, but at different speeds, depending on latitude. From zero, rotating at one of the Earth's poles, to over 1,000 miles per hour near the equator, we all spin together in the endlessly repeated revolutions of our days.

I had a dream last night. I was back in kindergarten with my old classmates but as we are today, all adults. We had declared a class reunion. After a snack and some coloring, we all held hands in a line that encircled the whole globe. We knelt down together in unison and gave the Earth a long, tender kiss. But this was only a dream.

How we choose to live this day, in this moment, is how our Earth will have remembered us, or forgotten us, ten thousand years hence.

Joseph Riden

. . . OR THIS?