My Sense of Responsibility as a Writer

 

Blog 32 February 17, 2022

                                                                                                          

This month, I want to return to the issue of my sense of responsibility as a writer, but more broadly as it relates to being an American citizen. I visualize my citizen’s stance as one person, one act at a time toward the greater good. Central to this perception is a dedication to truthfulness, even when the effort proves daunting. My lens is focused specifically on pride and what this word means to me conceptually, how I identify with it, how I clarify it, and how I attempt to remove any assumptions about it that infiltrate my thinking or writing.

Often, it seems these days, there is public pressure to submit to a pre-ordained profession of pride, e.g. “America, right or wrong.” Most simply put, it can attenuate to a required declaration of pride as an American citizen. Do I feel pride as an American? Sometimes, but not automatically. I do flush with pride when we, as a nation, do something right, something that tilts us closer to achieving our stated ideals, something that reflects who we can be to the world. In my novels, I try to imbue my protagonists with a congruent morality.

I have, however, also experienced doubt, even shame, not only over what our country has done historically, but at our current efforts at denial. Same country, different channels.

Not infrequently, I hear people speak of pride in being (fill in the blank), citing a race, a hue, an ethnicity, a religion, a gender. My ethnic heritage is at least fifty percent Irish. Am I proud of that? Frankly, pride doesn’t seem to enter into my reaction. But I enjoy the connection. I feel positive about the historical roots of people who survived attempted genocide by starvation and indifference while managing to produce a stream of writers and poets who contributed to the literary canon.

Pride for me personally, relates to accomplishment, not to an accident of birth. If I strive to do something (writing a novel) and I do it well (to be determined), I very likely will feel the blush of pride, briefly. Again for me, it’s akin to being an American. My responsibility is to display good citizenship; in return, my country owes me good governance. When we behave badly as citizens or as a country, why would I take pride in that?

I do feel fortunate to be an American, feel positive about doing my share to help my country be what it could be by striving to be what I can be, to achieve the standards I try to hold myself to. An example of this effort: a refusal on my part to allow political mania or expediency carry me off into a soul-decaying resentment of others or to surrender to the lure of a convenient explanation to make sense of a dizzying array of complex data.

I am deeply grateful to my country for allowing me opportunities I might not have in too many other countries, e.g. the freedom to express myself through the written word. How many Russians or (again, fill in the blank) would feel at ease expressing these feeling in writing?