What’s Your Purpose?
By John Vorhaus | November 27, 2014 |
(GIVEAWAY – GIVEAWAY- GIVEAWAY! In honor of the release of POOLE’S PARADISE, my generous benefactors at Bafflegab Books are awarding free e-copies of the novel (specify .pdf or .prc) to the first five people who correctly answer the following question: What do the words FACETIOUSLY and ABSTEMIOUSLY have in common? (Hint: the word MYUOPILEA has exactly the opposite quality.) Email your answer to john.vorhaus – at – gmail.com. HURRY! I mean HURRAH!)
So, yeah, my new novel comes out this week, POOLE’S PARADISE: An Imperfect Search for Purpose, and as you can probably guess from the subtitle, it has something to do with “purpose” – what that is, why it’s important, how it’s defined, and how we go about finding it. Our hero’s just a college kid, and can thus be forgiven, due to a case of extreme youth, for not having his sense of purpose dialed in. We, though, you and I, we are experienced writers, and it’s worth thinking about what our purpose is, and how to go about aligning our actions with our goals.
For a long time, I thought that my purpose was pretty simple: Sell More Books. Upon close inspection, however, I realize that that’s not purpose at all. It’s just a means to an end: the opportunity, freedom and financial security to… well, to do what? What is the end that my means so assiduously seek to serve?
There are all kinds of purposes that writing a book can serve. Mine, the fiction and non-fiction alike, tend to focus on instruction. But that’s just one way of looking at it. Many books have no greater ambition than to entertain, amuse, divert, or distract. These are fine goals, admirable ones, and if yours is among them, then I say kudos and encomia to you and your words. Other books, like thrillers and family dramas, seek to create what the estimable Paul Thompson calls “an anxiety-ridden experience about a subject that worries the reader.” That, too, is a fine goal in the sense that it gives readers vicarious access to feelings they wish to explore. Romance novels teach us that romance is real, and for everyone who desperately wants to believe that romance is real, that’s a truly wonderful thing.
Cookbooks teach cooking. Guidebooks guide us (up trails or into our souls). Joke books make us laugh. (“How many novelists does it take to change a lightbulb?” “It doesn’t need changing, it’s perfect the way it is.”) Erotica makes us swell with something other than pride. Every book has its purpose and whenever the book serves its stated purpose, it can be said to be doing its job. But that tail kind of chases itself: “The purpose of this book is to fulfill its purpose.” Yeah? So? Now what?
Now we need to think not just about purpose but about higher purpose, a writer’s ultimate responsibility, and whether that responsibility can be, should be, or must be served. I have always believed that, on some level, every book (indeed every story) is there to explain things to people who cannot or choose not to explain things to themselves. Readers turn to writers for answers, whether that’s how to launch a business, have healthy relationships, or not be afraid of the dark. In providing those answers, we writers serve our books’ purpose.
But not, perhaps, our higher one.
And now things get tricky, because as soon as the conversation turns to higher purpose, we get involved with questions of philosophy, theology, the meaning of life, “the isness of it all.” Me, I’m a rationalist from way back. I’ve never felt comfortable, for example, ascribing my higher purpose to God. But I want to ascribe it to something. I need to. Otherwise, I don’t know why I’m trying to sell all these books in the first place.
Well, when you’re writing for others you’re also writing for yourself, and thanks to POOLE, and the rabbit holes it led me down, I have arrived, at the tender age of 59, at something I’ve looked for all my life: a rational grounding for faith – a way of thinking about God that doesn’t make my skin crawl with self-consciousness. I’ve also cast a bright, clear light on the (or at least my) search for purpose. It’s simple and straightforward, and I’d like to share it with you now.
It seems to me, friends, that each of us is a steward of our DNA. Whether our lives were endowed to us by luck, God, fate, or a drunken tryst in the back of a Volvo, we have them now. [pullquote]Whether our lives were endowed to us by luck, God, fate, or a drunken tryst in the back of a Volvo, we have them now.[/pullquote]We each have stewardship over our unique genetic package. And we get to decide what kind of stewards to be. I choose to be a good one. I choose to use my time and my mind to speak to the positive side of the human equation. This choice gives me a super-reliable metric against which to measure my actions. If I have something positive and useful to say about the human condition (and I believe I do) then by doing the work I do, I honor the stewardship of my DNA.
And the clouds depart and the sky turns blue. Why? Because now, suddenly, I don’t have to worry about selling anymore. Selling is fine, selling is great, but it’s just a means to an end. It’s the end that matters, and to me the end is now clear. By transferring my thoughts from the ephemeral vessel of my brain into the slightly less ephemeral vessel of a book, I do a writer’s job and serve a writer’s purpose. And get this: I serve that purpose whether anyone pays me or not. I am set free.
Now look, I’m not advocating giving our stuff away – baby needs a new pair of shoes, right? What I’m advocating is keeping one’s eyes on the (true) prize. Once we know our purpose, and once we’re satisfied that it’s a worthy one, we can serve it with every word we write, whether those words make us lots of money, little money, or no money at all.
This is so liberating. I have a new novel coming out. It might sell big. It might sell small. It might sell not at all. And suddenly I don’t care! I’ve written it. I’ve made my point. Whether you, or anyone, or everyone gets the point is kind of beside the point. I have seized an opportunity to communicate the truth of my experience. Suddenly – profoundly – I find that that’s enough.
So what do you say, campers? What’s your higher purpose? What truth of your experience do you passionately wish to communicate to your readers. I’m looking for the real, true truth here, the urgent need that makes itself known to you in what Douglas Adams called, “the long, dark tea-time of the soul.” Name it. Own it. Stand behind it. Once you know it, you can write it, and once you write it, everything else falls right into place.
John Vorhaus has written seven novels, including Lucy in the Sky, The California Roll, The Albuquerque Turkey and The Texas Twist, plus the Killer Poker series and (with Annie Duke) Decide to Play Great Poker. His books on writing include The Comic Toolbox, How to Write Good and Creativity Rules!
So here on Thanksgiving morning, as I set my to-do list to make sure I get the turkey done on time, you want me to reflect about my higher purpose? Is that all? Actually, when I’m cooking is a great time to think about other things, so I’m going to wind up answering the question. The higher purpose I’ve come up with encompasses the work I do with children, with people who want to dance (whether they be 3-year-olds, 13-year-olds, 55-year-olds, or people with developmental disabilities), with the stories I choose to tell, with the blog posts I no longer write so regularly: I want to encourage us in the direction of softheartedness. To encourage us to look at those around us through the lens of compassion — we will still see them clearly, with all their faults and joys and self-justifications. It means that we will call them on their shit. But with compassion. Because we’ve got just as much shit to be called on. So let’s call it clearheadedness and softheartedness. Thank you for making me think this morning. And for this post, which, along with your Fail Big session at the UnCon, burst the hot air balloon of writerly anxiety I’d been feeding for too long. It’s wonderful to feel free and excited about story again.
I also really must say that I totally know what those words at the top of your post have in common, and it’s rather fun, but I already bought a copy of Poole’s Paradise, so I can’t enter :-)
Hi John:
Not fair to force me to think so hard on a holiday morning, but it’s not my turn to cook this year, although I do enjoy it. I was just re-reading Man’s Search for Meaning this morning — light holiday fare! — because the quest for meaning/purpose is what drives me to keep writing every day. I won’t try to reinterpret what Frankl had to say on the topic, except to mention he was imprisoned in four different concentration camps during WWII and lost his mother, father, wife, and brother to the Nazi terror.
But he never lost his will to meaning. Even in the darkest days of his captivity, when he could not act of his own free will, Frankl could still summon up the image of his beloved and find bliss.
This makes the deck of cards I got dealt absurdly insignificant in comparison. I’ve always known I wanted to be a writer, but it’s taken me decades to figure out what I was somehow put on earth to write. For me, the questions posed by the American Civil War have a lasting resonance, so much so that I sometimes wonder whether I lived through the sturm and drang of those years in a previous incarnation. Right now I’m using a cast of characters brought together by the battle of Gettysburg to explore these difficult topics, and I’ve just begun research for my next book, in which I want to revisit the last days of the Confederacy from multiple — and contradictory — points of view.
In his massive online course about the American Civil War, Eric Foner said this: “All history is contemporary history. The questions the historian asks are given to her by the world she lives in.”
This is what I was born to do. To translate my fascination with the American Civil War into Story with a capital “S.” To do battle with some very big questions, like war, death, suffering, and transcendence, and bring them to emotional life through the lives and loves of my characters.
This is my higher purpose. This is what I’ve been working towards all my life, despite numerous challenges and setbacks of a personal nature, which have given me what Viktor Frankl described as a “tragic optimism.”
Tough stuff to be thinking about on Turkey day. I told myself I wasn’t going to do any writing this morning, but I can’t NOT do it, and for this I give thanks everyday. And give thanks to you, John, and to all the contributors who make Writer Unboxed such a fabulous community.
I leave you with some lines from T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all.”
Deb
I like to read this when it comes to pass. Just spent the day with new in-laws in their Revolutionary war era farmhouse in Abbeville, SC. the so-called deathbed of the Confederacy. One of my all time favorite books is “Andersonville” by Maclinlay Kantor. If you have not read it, you should.
To show, by example, that you can’t discount people just because they have been damaged by life.
To educate by illustrating and reaching the emotions, rather than by preaching.
To satisfy the longing for meaning in a small sphere, as proof that it is possible.
When you talk about ‘purpose’ it always ends up sounding pretentious, especially before the book is finished. Afterward, if the job is done, people will find purpose by using the work as a mirror to see what they want.
I’ll quit before I get maudlin.
Happy Thanksgiving, John.
Thanks John for a thoughtful and thought-provoking post on this Thanksgiving morning. I wanted to dash off a quick congratulations for your book and a thought about purpose before going to Mass.
Heaven is my ultimate goal. I agree with Tolstoy when he says (and I’m paraphrasing) that the purpose of good art is to make people better through choice.
Yes! The pressures disappear when you write to serve rather than be served. When you share the light you’ve uncovered in hopes of dispelling someone else’s darkness.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Well, one purpose I’m trying to fulfil in my WIP is to do for gifted children what The Strange Incident of the Dog in the Nightime did for Aspergers – show what it’s like inside the head of someone who might seem to some people to be some kind of alien.
Is that pretentious enough?
Well, John, I’m glad you’ve finally had this revelation (that your writing can change the world). Better late than never.
My personal mantra is this: “Make no mistake: Writing is an aggressive act
because you aren’t leaving well enough alone.” It’s by author Bonni Goldberg. So I try never to leave well enough alone. My WIP is a YA novel about a high school senior named Eric, who is transgender and desperately wants to be girl. The novel hits on many the issues transgender children have to deal with–being bullied, divorce of parents, school administrators who don’t understand, being thought of as gay, etc.
Traditional publishers are now expecting more from authors than just an interesting novel. The YA novel “Hoot” by Carl Hiaasen, read by 6th graders in my local school district, provides a lesson on protecting burrowing owls, for example. (Just as an aside, having your novel chosen by a school district or university or put on a Common Core reading list, where hundreds or thousands of copies are purchased in a whack, is where you should want to be.) And, then there is the famous book, the diary of Anne Frank, that provides every student in New York State with a lesson about the Holocaust.
No, I’ve never thought about the money. To me, it’s always about the message.
Hi John! First time commenter here, new reader too!
Everything that I write hinges on loneliness and making hard decisions. I think my purpose is to express and explore how it feels to be truly alone, and how community can save us from that hole.
And making hard decisions is part of that. Deciding to get out of ourselves, to be vulnerable so that others can see us. Loneliness is more often self-made than because of others. If only we would break down our mental walls, we would see that we have so much in common with everyone we meet…
John, my muse, my friend…EXACTLY. Write for you. The rest will come. Or not. But if you write for you, the rest doesn’t matter.
All you U.S. folk, with the Thanksgiving-too-close-to-Christmas, enjoy. Us Canadian’s toast you. Much to be thankful for.
Denise Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
I enjoy writing so I guess my “whole” purpose is to do work I love.
But for my first novel, my purpose is to educate the new generation of migrant Filipinos about our mythology while enjoying the story at the same time.
Good Lord! If anyone turns to my novel for education or enlightenment, I also have a used bridge between Manhattan and Brooklyn that they can get cheap.
My driving purpose is compassion. I tend to write dark stories because I feel it’s a way to examine what goes on in a person’s soul and spirit that drives them to either make bad decisions, or try to find a way out of the darkest of times. I think compassion is the most underrated human commodity. As well as empathy. I want to strike that counterbalance that will put a reader into someone else’s skin and wonder what they would do in their position.
Great, thought-provoking post, John.