All my life I have felt compelled to put pen to paper or type my thoughts through my fingers into a keyboard, but I do not consider myself artistic with words. Isn't that what a writer is? A word crafter? Sometimes thoughts or ideas move me so deeply that I have to express them concretely and organize them, even if it is just in an e-mail to a friend. Only then can I release them.
I remember writing my first stories in a book while riding a train from Texas to Kansas in first grade. A lady on the train expressed interest in my stories and admired my drawings. Writing was an expression of the world in my imagination, and if I wasn't writing, I was 'living it' with my stuffed animals and Barbies. Recently I purused a collection of my school story writings and was surprised, wondering when my imagination had begun its fade into dormancy. I never won any writing contests and was too shy to pursue journalism.
Can a writer have a horrible vocabulary? I was barely average on the ACT or GRE in language arts, and I far more excelled in math. Now I am a scientist, but I still want to write. I need to write - even if I'm not a gifted writer, even if I am never published. It's just something that I must do to feel like I am really alive.
The gift of writing....
I no longer think it is a facility for words, or an active imagination, that makes one a writer. I don't even think it is a way of seeing the world uniquely. I have rather come to believe that it is a way of feeling: things move you, deeply, and then you feel as if every cell in your body must pay attention to what is moving you, with a sense of something like urgecy. People like this grope to find something to express the feeling - a pen, a brush, a keyboard...And that is how art is made. Not always, but often. (Ken Gire, Relentless Pursuit page 51).
To my blogging friends - why do YOU write?
I cannot think of a time that I did not write, or at least thought about writing. In my early twenties there was a historical romance of a heroine during the War Between the States in my mind. I even did research to make it historically feasible down to where the railroads were and the battle lines for a pivotal point in the story. I did not write it because I lacked confidence, somewhere along my way my research notes were lost. The plot has never left me though.
ReplyDeleteI am a published writer of health-related articles which started because I had a health-related Internet business for which I did all the writing and a local publication was looking for regular submissions in exchange for an employee discount at their health food store. I have been submitting articles for around fourteen years and only a handful have ever been rejected, to my surprise!
I blog because I enjoy keeping a journal of...well, just whatever I like to jot down: things that we are doing, memories, spiritual thoughts, reviews of what books I have read, desires, bits of wisdom I have learned on life's journey...just stuff. I enjoy reading my older posts and remembering the moments I have chronicled.
I am also an artist and like to act, so I think writing is just another aspect of my creative nature that just will not, and probably should not, ever be contained, but certainly tempered by my Lord.
I think I write because I can't NOT write. It's like sketching or painting or teaching. It just IS who I am and I sometimes can't contain it. I enjoy your writing so much Paula. You share a vast array of 'life's moments'.
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