The very nicest thing about being a writer is that you can afford to indulge yourself endlessly with oddness, and nobody can really do anything about it, as long as you keep writing and kind of using it up, as it were. – Shirley Jackson
Are writers, all writers, odd? Eccentric? Different? I suppose there are as many odd and eccentric anything elses out there (plumbers, athletes, doctors, librarians, teachers…) as there are writers, but Jackson does have point. If you choose, as I did, to be in the arts, people can and do make assumptions of differentness, of exaggerated (in their minds) unconventionality, of wildness they wish they had the nerve to seek, when in truth there are as many conventional lives lived in the arts as in any other profession.
And not all writers are introverts, although I would say more introverts go into writing, or painting or sculpting and yes, even into acting (where one is able to hide behind the character one plays) than into many other walks of life.
Maybe.
Personally, I was always a listener, an observer. Some of this was no doubt due to my 3rd child status in a fast stack of 4 children born in 5 years; an unwanted child, too, for who listens to that kid? Better to keep ones mouth shut and watch this thing – this life – this interesting, unique family drama-rama play out. Family, friends neighbors, classmates, peers, remembered figures, future cameo appearances by people even more haunted than I am, or ever could be…always recording, remembering, eyes wide-open, mouth shut.
Mother thought to be an artist, an actress, was equivalent to being a prostitute, and a liar. By the time I made this choice, and she expressed her decidedly 19th century opinions, my course was set. I did not do or become anything in opposition or defiance of what she believed and pronounced about me, instead, like tree roots working their way around a boulder too big to ignore, I adapted. I adjusted. I became secretive and closed off. I watched, and listened, and saw a lot. Writing, acting, painting – it’s all the same: self-expression. Trying to bring what is inside us, hidden, buried, felt, thought – out into the light.
If writers – or cab drivers, or any human being … are odd, are eccentric – life has made them, us, so. We’re all just freaks, ain’t we, truly, scratching the skin, going deeper, getting to the good stuff?