Author! Author! Author!
Authors are beautiful people. That, of course, is a generalization that does not always hold true . Some authors are beautiful people would be a more accurate observation even though it tells us very little about authors. We could also add that some are short, some are tall, some are young, some are old, and so on. None of those qualifiers tells us anything about authors that isn’t also true of everyone else.
So what makes authors different?
Authors have the courage to commit their thoughts to writing so that others can inspect them, judge them, and decide if they reflect humor, wisdom, charm, inspiration, wit, logic, intelligence, or, conversely, if they lack all those attributes and reflect only the muddled thinking of someone who is suffering from a mental illness and needs professional care or confinement.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Authors have charm. They trust in their abilities to surround us with words that sometimes rhyme, sometimes urge us to sing, sometimes make us happy, and other times make us cry. They are most charming when their words make us laugh.
When authors make us laugh they do not have the luxury of showing us funny gestures, or funny faces, or funny ways to move their bodies. A standup comedian can do those things and we often find we must hold our sides from our laughter. But read the same words on paper and they might fall flat as a pancake. Authors must flip those mental pancakes to make them come alive with other words. Writing funny stuff is hard work.
Authors can show us new ways to do things. They can build complex equations, relate them to reality, connect their measurements and observations and point them to things in the physical world. When done with care and clarity, they teach us, show us the error of our old ways and the pathway to a new, more enlightened future. Authors can be very smart and instructive.
Authors can be logical. They can point out our inconsistencies, show us why certain conclusions are faulty, remind us of our history, and why one path to follow is better than another. Authors can be wise.
When authors are wise they make us think. But unlike teachers authors only lead, they don’t demand that we learn exactly what they want us to learn. The wisest among them lead us only so far and then they let us fill in the blanks from our own experiences so that we can reach conclusions that make sense to us.
Authors can be witty. They can point out the incongruities of life without demeaning us. But they know that brevity is the soul of wit.
I agree that it takes courage to publish what you have written and expose it to public scrutiny. Some good writers never do that and never become authors. Readers are a fickle lot and have their favorite sources. Even the best authors have to promote, promote, and promote.
Inspirational piece, Ed.
Ron