Today is the 4th of July…the day when parents everywhere lose what little sense they have, go out and buy their small children explosives. Yep…today there will be kids 3-16 being handed a small device that could take off their little hands or burn their little noses off….because in America, in terms of celebration…that makes sense to us. (Only in America…at least in other countries they have the good sense to get the kids drunk first) Yeah us!
I am going to propose a saner celebration for us writers. I am going to suggest that we take this day and in-between our BBQ and Bic lighters we give some thought to our independence as writers. One thing that most people can’t argue with about America is that we are afforded a few more freedoms than a lot of other places. One of those freedoms comes in the form of expression and writers, well, we are the most expressive of all. We take to our keyboards or note pads, often with reckless abandon, and write whatever we want to, whenever we want to. We are free to do that and it’s kind of cool.
In many other countries the governments do everything they can to stop writers. Some reporters are actually killed for what they write. Children are controlled within schools and discouraged from self-expression. Regular writers are sometimes imprisoned for years at a time just for writing stories about what is happening inside their worlds. And some years back, a famed Muslin writer actually had to flee a country for his life just for writing a book. He still lives in fear of being killed. (Salman Rushdie) Writing is often not something folks can do openly or freely.
So take a moment today and celebrate the fact that you can write freely and spend some time sending out good energy to those folks in other places who maybe don’t have that freedom so readily. When you pick up your pen or sit down at your keyboard, marvel at the fact that when you peck away at those keys there is no one standing over you threating jail or worse. Celebrate the writers who came before you and the many writers who will follow you along the path that all writers take….the path to story and the freedom that you have had in traveling that path. Happy 4th Writers!
© The Writer’s Advice, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
