Writing my way through life
Writing is weird. There are times where I'm trying to sleep, and all I want to do is write, and there are times where I'm trying to write, and all I want to do is sleep.
The other day though I was staring at my screen with pages of notes strewn on my desk in front of me, I knew I just needed to start writing. Then my coworker who isn't a writer peeked over and said, "Writing is hard, I know."
I didn't even process my response when I said quickly, and hopefully not too rudely, "Writing isn't hard thinking is." Once you start writing instinct kicks in and you let your hands become extensions of your brain tracing across the keyboard working out your thoughts as you go.
English majors know that there are ‘rules' to writing and best practices to move thoughts to the page. This is about to be super cliché, but I roll my eyes at the idea that there are right ways and wrong ways to write. I just like to string words together in my mind so quickly that sometimes I don't know what's about to come next until its already in front of me on the paper or screen.
Breaking rules is not something I like to do often either, so I'm not coming at this from a point of rebellion, but more so, as a self-taught writer and I use the term ‘self-taught' in lose terms as I do have a degree in writing. I say ‘self-taught’ though because my writing, especially my creative writing, reminds me of how I play the guitar.
No one taught me how to play guitar. I say ‘play guitar' in loose terms because I know the chords just like I know the words, and I can strum rhythms just like I can create, and sometimes when I play it sounds good, but I'm not doing it ‘right.'
I can remember my first story, it didn't get any praise or awards from my fourth-grade teachers, but my friends talked about it all through recess. Soon I wrote stories all the time and I shared at dinner tables, bedtimes, and beyond; They were the squiggly lines of my mind strung together. Then I began to think in writing. My brain became a notebook quickly scribbling then erasing words.
As I grew older, and the squiggly lines became truly curled synapses, I spent any time I could moving words around in my notebook of a mind to make them work. Writing became my way of thinking; ironing out the moments that couldn't be worked out in real life.
This isn't always the most serving skill. My writing is often riddled with errors, and sometimes I feel that it sounds good enough in my head so I don't look back at it.
It has taken years, nearly 24 years, for me to face the solved puzzles I call my writing and edit…then copyedit, then proof, then probably make some more changes until its not just for me, but for my reader. Writing belongs in the hands of the reader after all, for them to take in and find a place to feel recognized in the ironed creases they too have faced.
Worst of all though, if you think in writing, you think beyond reality; life's little problems, become big thoughts. Sure, when I'm watching the world from the train window I can write a story of it carrying me home with each clack of the rail, but I can also write out mad scenarios of the crashes and fires and breaking down. When you can think in writing, your mind can forget to edit for reality.
It was when I learned to use my writing, my magic, to turn facts into informative headlines, and ideas into a call to action, that I started to become the writer I want to be.
I will always turn to the page when the world becomes something to escape. I will also always turn to the page when the world becomes something I need to figure out!
