Writer's Statement

My creative writing professor felt that it was important for all of us to write 500-word writer's statements talking about our work. I was an asshole and wrote this:

I do not wish to make a writer’s statement because I believe that doing so is a waste of time. I think that writer’s statements, artist’s statements, and whatever statements politicians make are totally arbitrary. In my humble opinion, whatever a writer or artist’s intentions were when they created his or her piece goes out the window once they show it to someone else. Totally irrelevant. People see what they want to see in something, and the general consumer population doesn’t do a lot of research before they read something or look at something.  They just take it in and react to it based on their own experiences and ideas. They make jigsaw puzzles out of anything they can; they cut everything apart themselves and then piece it together.

There is a quote from some Chuck Palahniuk novel that says, “What you don’t understand, you can make mean anything.” I haven’t read any of Palahniuk’s writer’s statements. I have no way of knowing what he meant at the time that he wrote those words. However, I am going to take his quote and use it for my own purposes here because I believe that it is applicable to my feelings about writer’s statements and writing in general. Doing so only serves to further prove my point. 

At this point, I have wasted at least fifteen minutes writing this, and whoever is reading this has probably wasted about a minute doing so. I understand that creating a writer’s statement is probably something important to work on for an aspiring writer, which is why I’ve completed my statement by bitching about statements instead of not doing one at all.  I’ve probably learned a lot and grown as a writer because of this experience. If I knew who decided that all writers must have statements justifying their work, I would call him or her up and say, “Hey, thanks, guy. What a brilliant idea. You’ve really helped me out.”  However, I do not know who is behind the genius of the writing statement. They could be dead for all I know; in which case, it would be silly to call him or her up because he or she would not be in a position to answer the phone.

Some people would call an anti-writer’s statement writer’s statement “ingenious” or “cleverly ironic.” I would call those people stupid. This is clearly a cop out. I think that everyone’s time has been sufficiently wasted at this point. And so, I conclude my writing statement by ceasing to type.