Writing is a passion of mine—or so I have tricked myself into believing.
If I am a supposedly a "writer"—not just a girl with wi-fi, free time, and adequate knowledge of the English language—then what is my responsibility? How can I really reach anyone? How and why should I write anything that screams out among all the chatter, that acts upon this world, that wont be chewed up and spit out and never heard from again?
I really do marvel in the way we can package up our thoughts into a unique string of words and symbols and transport them to an audience across the room, around the world, or one hundred years in the future. The thoughts are then reinterpreted, translated, contextualized—maybe even misunderstood—but still, a connection is made between writer and reader.
I think what I have struggled with as a "writer" is what—if anything—is even worth sending across that connection. Why do I write? Why should anyone read it? Am I asking the wrong questions altogether?
This afternoon, I have the means to put these words up on the Internet, throw them in the cyber-face of all my facebook friends, and probably get at least a hundred people to glance at them in a day or two. It's amazing how quickly and widely my words can diffuse...
If, however, I had to scribble out my thoughts in ink and then send them in a bottle across the Atlantic, if my message had to travel 1,000 miles by Pony Express, or even if I just had to stick a letter in an envelope and drop it in the mail box, I think that I would choose more poignant, meaningful words. Perhaps I would stop to think:
Why am I writing? To whom am I writing? What will it mean to them when they read it?
Why am I writing? To whom am I writing? What will it mean to them when they read it?
If I am a supposedly a "writer"—not just a girl with wi-fi, free time, and adequate knowledge of the English language—then what is my responsibility? How can I really reach anyone? How and why should I write anything that screams out among all the chatter, that acts upon this world, that wont be chewed up and spit out and never heard from again?
In the past, and for many today, connections between writers and readers have to span across oceans, scale mountains, transform to new languages, and pass by governments. While communication may appear free and easy in the world of google translate and twitter, it has its own treacherous barriers to cross—and I think its bounds are hugely overestimated.
I'm sort of working to be a writer of some sort. Maybe a travel writer, maybe a journalist, maybe an anthropologist, maybe a biographer, maybe (probably) something else entirely.
My hope is that I will learn to write what is worth writing.
...That I would be willing, despite how simple it is just to click the "SUBMIT" button, to ask those questions I originally posed: Why am I writing? To whom am I writing? What will it mean to them when they read it?
...That I will not speak just because I can, but—at least more often—because I must.
I want discover if there is even a way to write words that don't skip like pebbles across computer screens and magazines, but that plop like a rock into the waters of the heart, sinking to the bottom, staying there, causing ripples that go out for miles.
My hope is that I will learn to write what is worth writing.
...That I would be willing, despite how simple it is just to click the "SUBMIT" button, to ask those questions I originally posed: Why am I writing? To whom am I writing? What will it mean to them when they read it?
...That I will not speak just because I can, but—at least more often—because I must.
I want discover if there is even a way to write words that don't skip like pebbles across computer screens and magazines, but that plop like a rock into the waters of the heart, sinking to the bottom, staying there, causing ripples that go out for miles.
I think it's possible, and I'd like to try.
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