The Thing About Writing or If You Love What You Do

I may not do it all the time, but I think about writing all the time. However obvious this might sound to you, it wasn't to me, and by that I mean that I never noticed I was doing it. Never noticed I was thinking about writing. There was a time way back in the the early 2000s when I blogged nearly every day on MySpace-- I thought about writing all the time. It's like people who take photos with their phones these days of nearly every mundane event that occurs. I was taking snapshots in my head and converting what I saw or felt into words. What words would I use? What emotions or events did I want to replay? Which emotions or events would most accurately relate my emotions or thoughts on the subject?

Stop me if you've heard this story before. Or skip ahead a paragraph or something. In the spring of 2017, I interviewed an English professor who had greatly influenced the way I saw myself as a reader, writer, and student. I'm a little shame to admit that it was he who unveiled this obvious truth, but I'll explain later why I could not see it. He said that people write all the time and don't even know it. People text, email, engage in social media, yet how many actually consider that writing? Why don't more of us consider that writing? And this was in response to the idea that many folks hold that they "can't"write. "I don't know how to spell," "I'm not creative," "I don't even know how to make a sentence." Except, you know what? Spelling doesn't matter, describe what creativity is and where it comes from, and yes, you do! And even if you don't, it doesn't have to matter.

Now, I can point out the lie because I've repeated them to myself over and over again. My favorite excuse for not writing is the I'm not creative one. I know some writers-- like, personally know them-- and they blow my mind! I feel like Bill when he says, "We're totally weak. We can't possibly fight you." I'm totally weak, I can't possibly write like you! It took me long time until I realized so many things about writing, including this truth: not everyone writes like Stephen King. Or Ernest Hemingway. Or Toni Morrison. So why do I expect to write like my friends? Doesn't mean I can't write if I don't write like someone else.

Writing isn't just for entertainment or academia. For me, and probably quite a lot of other people, writing is healing. And if it isn't healing, it's exploration. As Georganne used to say in class, writing is thinking. My way of dealing with stuff is pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard. You have read a few of my blogs since my surgery, but there are so many more that went unpublished. Writing allows me to go down the proverbial rabbit hole. I have an experience and I can explore it from different angles, and then I pull the words I need to express myself and then cull what I don't need in the end. Writing can help give my experience shape when I don't understand it.

When I woke up this morning to say goodbye to Charlie as he left for work, I began to think about what I was going to write about today and then I drifted back to sleep. I can't remember specifically what my thoughts were, but even thinking about writing brought me peace because I knew that writing would bring some measure of peace when I actually got around to doing it. And in my gratitude journal, what I really want to write in there every single day (and maybe I should, right?) is that I'm thankful to have some measure of talent in and understanding of writing because I have no idea how I'd cope without it.

One of these blogs might take at least an hour to compose-- longer if I actually take the time to reread it for errors or editing. Usually, I don't do that, especially lately. During that time, though, and likely ONLY during that time, I feel in command of my life. Like sorting beads by color into different bowls, writing is cathartic. It feels good.