Earnestness: My first book is messy, and I love it

Earnestness: My first book is messy, and I love it 

Samuel Bird

A deep pain of the heart spread to my stomach as I felt physically ill. Should the universe entire, cave in and cause a cessation of being, I would feel guilt to end all life, but it seemed to be for their best. I wanted no other beings to feel this feeling I felt this day. I kept a cold and expressionless face, on a day whose weather matched. No passerby would have known that this was the worst day of my life, and as such that I wished it to never again be. This naysaying to life scared me, but the lament was not without its grounding. In my pain, my soul seemed to reach out in one last fatalistic attempt for anything. At once, a story came to me. Though narratives are across time, in a singular instant came a tale that seemed to be something to grab onto in my darkness. I knew everything at that moment. The names of the characters, their identity, and their exploits. I knew what this story was and what it needed to say. I raced to the nearest building that was appropriate to enter and left the cold winter and yearnings behind. The bleakness and desolation of spirit that man is not made for, was traded for devotion and passion. I began to type feverishly and fervently. Slowly the shape of the story was molded on blank page as words raced from my mind. The next few months carried the same brutal burden I had felt before, but I now had the zeal and vigor that comes from that weight being bore for a purpose. My life became more than my own as I felt a deep aid to my fellow humans in what was being shaped on those pages. Not a desire to be known or respected, but an honest and true desire to do what I could for those that I could. The last forty pages were finished during my most busy semester’s final week at school. I loved my education, but this book was becoming an extension of my mission. I saw it as where I started with this then-ineffable desire to shape the world. I had cried during at least a third of my time writing this book, but as the last words found themselves cascading from my mind to hand to paper, warm tears seemed to come from a heart now with a flickering flame once again. I closed the book and my eyes as I concluded that I had morphed this bitter and deep pain into something beautiful. Of all descriptions of my ailment or prescriptions of its solution, all were laid to rest in what I was able to create in my misery. 

Thus, my start as a writer came about. I began to go through and catch the more egregious spelling and grammatical errors. I then passed on copies of this rough draft to a series of friends. A few of my more earnest friends read the book and loved it. They were able to pinpoint a few things they found confusing, but they were simple fixes. They then would spend hours asking me about what made me think of this or that. The fact that they were thinking about the ideas at hand meant my goal was accomplished. They would then tell me they understood the characters and felt a love for them. They could feel the heart in the story and its childlike wonder to gaze out over the unknown. They would then ask about the end of the book. In the climax is a disjunct that the reader is not told the answer to. There are clues both ways, but there is nothing that makes it clear what the outcome of the climax is. They would ask me about it, but I told them that I would not tell them. They asked if I knew, and I told them I did, but the mystery was needed for the story's effect. The last person that read the book had a different take. They said it was overly simple, naive, and childlike. He compared it to much better pieces of literature and made it clear that it was not. I was distraught but wanted answers. I submitted the book to an editing class where they would go over the book for the whole semester. By the end of the semester, I went in for my last interview for the class. They had more questions and simple critiques. There were also some accolades and expressions of what the book did for them. I was flying high until a certain girl started to speak. She compared it to contemporary writings and told me this book was nothing like those. I nodded and told her it was more inspired by Ion and Crito by Plato. She said that it not fitting into this modern form of a book made it terrible. She then went on with a random and feverish attack on the book. I recognized that there must be something more at hand. Perhaps something in the book hit a nerve. Perhaps she didn’t like what it questioned. I resolved each concern as it mounted. However, my shoveling away of the mountain that was falling on me was minuscule compared to the persecution at hand. I left that class with a lowliness in this labor of love. I read through the book a few times. I struggle to see myself as fully human and hence struggle to know what they would find preferable. Not knowing the book's worth, I set it aside for over a year.

During this time, I began writing other books. These ideas were more fleshed out, more formal, and more commendable. I had read nearly a hundred books in that year and was able to have a better idea of how I wanted to say what I wanted to say in writing. The more I read and knew, rather than having more insights into how to write this book, I felt myself grow more alienated from this book. I would sit down to read the pages of notes the editing class had given me, but I couldn’t bear to read through them. This criticism that was meant to be constructive just seemed to tear something down that I felt so close to my heart. I would then lose that same innocent passion and veal that the book was written under and set down the book. Going back to basics, I would open the book and read through it. I would change a little sentence here or something about the layout, but I couldn’t bring myself to achieve all the dates I set to publish it. I felt I was betraying who I was. Once, this was my dream to start the work I wanted to commence. I commenced in that effort, but now I was seemingly too far down the road to then appreciate this. How then can we think to start out on a voyage if we hate how we set sails when we leave the dock? I dove headfirst into Esse Maxim and began to build it. The structure became more pronounced and specific as this idea dreamt by a younger me was now in the language of my people. I thought back to my little first book, how far I had grown, and how simple it seemed now. But, what place did it now have in my chosen mission? I thought back to the core of Esse Maxim. It was the idea of deliberately engaging with my existence. I began to think of this and other simple ways to express it. I also thought back to my disagreement with constant critiques and my love of positing an argument. It was the Ostentatious pretentiousness that I wanted to exclude for the inclusion of something else. Then what was this thing I sought after? I meditated on the matter but found language was limited to what I trying to say. There was one word, however, that came close. That word was earnestness. 

At the core of this earnestness and its differentiation from pretension, I see the difference being: A desire to be thought of as something or to be that thing at the expense of being seen as it. Was there a discrepancy between who I willed to be and who I signified? This is a simple dichotomy that stems back to the learning of a child. Would you rather be seen as good and not be, or be seen as bad but not be? A simple thought exercise illustrates. Which of the latter would you choose? To cause pain to someone and not be known or to not have caused that pain and for it to be thought you did? At the core of this is authenticity, I think of one picking out a trajectory for life for its own merit and not for what it socially and environmentally produces. Then when this trajectory collides with the expectations of others or our comfort, authenticity is to stay the course at all expenses. So then, did I want to be perceived as some great thinker who never made a more basic work? Or, would I rather that I fulfilled my mission? I thought to the verbal weapons of the manipulators. There is what their words seem and what their words do. I worry this earnestness is lost on modern philosophy. It is true that my words and their humble nature didn’t seem to have great academic prowess, but that is for the good reason that they were not. Rather, I thought of how the pages resulted in people who were attempting to be earnest, finding some vital new resources to exist well. My detractors as right as they were, had a sense of what the book ought to be, but neither could tell me what it was the book did. Then it was my weak desire to be thought of well that was getting in the way of this mission that mattered so much to me. I wanted to be seen as wise, rather than to bring something into the world. I have long chosen to be someone who stands in the place of ridicule because the sharing or attempting of something matters so much to me. I will stand there ready for the old vegetables to come my way, but I will not rob the reader's future of what this book was for me. 

I repented of what I had done. I found the old book cover that I had drawn up and started editing one last time. This time was with the intention of bringing it into the world. I read through it one last time and found my worries were grounded. It was a simple book. However, I also recalled why it was I thought this book was important enough to give up evenings. It was where beauty was poured from a heart’s cracks. I felt love anew for the characters. They were in the same boat. They had silly little ideas and could often be wrong, but they cared enough to have this newfound value. They were earnest. They desired value over the seemingness of it. I feel that same flow of tender emotion that these pages were written under. Not an awe of the great power of the text, but a reverence for its heart. This book wants to do something great. Whether or not it obtains will need to be up to you. However, the book comes from a place of want and effort. While these two can fail, they have an intrinsicness about them that makes them valuable for their own sake. I have around fifteen more books in the works, but I struggle to work myself up to sharing them. While they will each be ones I would have less stress if they fell in the lap of an academic, I will never again be ashamed for this deep yearning in my heart even if it was without know-how in my mind. In short, and with earnestness, my hope is that this story does for you what it did for me. It may not seem like anything special, and might not be. However, when the cover is closed and sat before you as you consider what it was about, I have reason to believe you will find the reading of it valuable.