So I was updating my Facebook page...

"There is no such thing as an ignorant writer."

I posted my infantile thought on the website and moved back to my developing interest of Jungian Philosophy when one of my classmates had posted that he had never heard me say something so stupid before. Upon inquiring what he meant, he stated:

"Its ignorace in itself to state there is no such thing as an ignorant writer."

It then occurred to me that he had used the finality in my statement to suggest an ignorance in my own statement. A barrage of similarly stated quotes from my freshmen year in high school came back, and i found myself chuckling at my obvious oversight-- we had two completely different definitions of the obligations of the writers and the frivolity of all others.

But, this understanding came to me after I sought to explain myself. It was actually quite simple: it occurred that not everyone who writes a book is a writer, neither did one need to write a book in order to be considered a writer. I didn't have to think long, but it was obvious that writers--good, impacting ones, anyway, had to take their characters, their towns, their customs, and their sciences and learn them better than anyone else. They had to be able to explain the mechanics of magics, relay the history of a city, tell the customs of their world, and conjure an imaginary being to the readers all in a way that the reader can understand and accept.  Some do this through fantasy; others, through science fiction. Still, all writers must synthesize all this with the public. They must craft a tale, as intimate, or as expansive as it may be, to the human mind or soul.

This task cannot be accomplished with the chains of ignorance. With ignorance, I do not mean the lack of omnipotence in this world, but the impudence of assuming that there is a universality to their understandings or their beliefs of the subject which they choose to write about. They cannot be so blind, or they will fail their characters, their world, and themselves. Writers who pay no attention to these laws cannot call themselves writers; they are technicians of fictional uniform, with no true merit to their name. Those types of individuals--the novelists, the screenwriter, the playwright,-- will never be writers until they graduate from their infantile devotion to "structure" in art. Writers, by nature, are also philosophers-- that's what sets them apart. If you philosophize about nothing, then you have nothing, for your art will say nothing.