Erika Napoletano is Redhead Writing

You published this as I was jumping into Seth Godin's "The Dip"... I dig it.

Serendipity.

-Nick

Thanks for stopping by, Nick...and it was great to finally meet you at Ignite Boulder!

I agree! Sorry I can't be there tonight for the TweetUp - I'm bringing an unconference to ICOR instead and got overbooked. :-P

Wow, I needed that Bitch Slap, even though it stung a little. Even more than the "dry hump."

HAH! Thank you, Robyn. It's great to know something I wrote resonated with you :) Happy holidays and thanks for reading!

Since you appear to be in a transition phase in which you are analyzing your own behaviours, and trying to live more deeply, think more clearly, and write more insightfully, let me share something I've always valued: Faulkner's Nobel acceptance speech...or, as you would title it, "Stop dry humping your keyboard".

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work--a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

I generally have a rule about posting comments with invalid email addresses, but in your instance I'll make an exception. Once. And here's why:

I don't dry hump my keyboard. I'm in the beautiful position where I earn a living doing what I love, and that's writing. My keyboard is the intersection of my personal and professional lives - the line connecting my ying and yang. This post isn't about my challenge with writing - it's the only way I know how to share my challenge with my audience. It's about "the smack." The upside-the-head, uncomfortable smack that sets us all back on track.

And that speech - I've read it many times. I appreciate you stopping by and sharing with everyone else.

I never dry hump my keyboard. It's the most loving partner I have and I always...ALWAYS...use lube.

And to be true to my other readers, no more comments without valid email addresses, mkay? :)

Thanks for sharing! I love your early references to the people at the gym. That's so on point!