7. Quote a line from your favorite writer, and explain what it means to you (1) individually and (2) as a writer.

Instead, I will reference a favorite song lyric, and I don’t even know who wrote it (apparently, Bert Berns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_Berns, and he’s apparently written a lot of great songs), and I’m partial especially as it is sung by one of my favorite singers (the late Solomon Burke) in the song “Cry to Me”:

“Loneliness, loneliness, such a waste of time.”

Ellsworth Toohey: “Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. Nobody will ever hear us.

Howard Roark: “But I don’t think of you.”

-From Ayn Rand’s novel, The Fountainhead

(1) What it means to me individually:

Loneliness is a non-productive emotion and state of being. When one is lonely, one’s loneliness consumes one’s mind. Most times that loneliness comes with yearning for companionship, and yet when lonely that yearning often comes with an inability to seek out companionship. It’s like a horrible condition worse than most unrequited desires, because it self-perpetuates the misery.

(2) What it means as a writer:

It has a clever metonym of “loneliness” for “time spent being lonely.” It takes an emotion (loneliness), which is normally something outside of time, and forces you to think of it in a temporal sense (the time spent), so that it could be considered within the set (wasted time).

The meaning would change if you just said “Loneliness is such a waste.” Then it would mean the emotion of loneliness is a waste within one’s set of emotions. But who cares? When emotions have no time to them, then there’s an infinite supply.

If the line were rephrased “the time spent being lonely is wasted,” the meaning would be the same, but that incongruity in comparison terms would be lost. The listener would not need to make sense of the line, might miss the message, and might miss the importance of time being of limited supply.

(1) What it means to me individually:

It’s the ultimate diss. This character, Toohey, is out to destroy everything Roark stands for, and is quite successful at it. Yet, it doesn’t matter to Roark because Toohey’s machinations are nothing compared to what really matters: designing and building.

That’s what writing is to me, and it is a lovely way to think of people who stand in your way. I simply don’t have to.

Reading those 6 words meant that I could let go of what other people thought. Just like that, I can put that energy into doing what I love instead of explaining why I write, and fighting to do it.

(2) What it means as a writer:

To Roark, architecture is everything and he builds with an integrity and fervor that is akin to religious martyrdom. As Roark says: “A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose.”

So nothing and no man’s actions stand in the way of Roark’s art and his craft. And that inspires me as a writer because writing and being a writer is not just a thing I do. It is my passion and, at times, my burden. But it’s what I choose.

Those who have tried to steer me away from writing because it’s not a career path, or something that pays the bills, I get they want what they want for me because they think they know what’s best. Or they don’t support it because they don’t get it.

But it doesn’t matter what they want anymore, and I can just stop thinking about them, and simply think about writing and how to be a writer.