Why I Write
Inspired by Lee Skallerup Bessette, this post explores why I write.
Early on, I wrote a piece I don’t think in words, which helped me express something about how my mind works. Writing is about finding the words; it’s an act of translation from something ephemeral and felt into something communicable and concrete. I can never transmit my mind or let anyone peek inside, but writing allows for some kind of proxy. It’s a translation from one “language” into another, more real and shared.
In terms of how my mind works, it's… spacial. It has depth and distance, volume and mass. Ideas often occupy space, allowing me to “see” them as galaxies and nebulas. When I get a new idea, it feels more like two stars colliding and forming something new. There is a flash, there’s an epiphany and a bolt from the sky.
Thinking feels good.
Writing is more challenging. It’s more like refining ore - it’s dirty and difficult trying to extract what’s of value from the stone that encases it. While thinking feels like I’m dealing with light, writing is like dirt. It’s damp, solid and heavy. It’s not clay or bricks; it lacks adhesive characteristics to be structural. You can shape it, but it’s weak and falls apart. You have to go slow, work with the flow and subsidence until it holds. It's about working in layers instead of shaping it directly.
Writing feels like work, but it’s good work. It’s good labour and toil; I feel better for it, and spending the time crafting what I feel are often unshapely mounds rather than sculpted forms. I feel connected to the soil and something bigger than me. I can see my little mounds, dreaming that they’ll be hills, but knowing that they are more likely to erode into nothing, perhaps discovered sometime in the future by archeologists whose only reading of what’s left is to ask - “Why?”.
Why I write is to seek a balance of sorts. Left only to think I drift off into space, lost and untethered to what’s around me. Writing gives me weight; it's my gravity. It helps keep me grounded and connected. If I cannot translate my thoughts into words, then what is the point? The words have helped me craft a space of my own. A little depression in the shape of myself. Writing has helped me stay grounded and connect with others. I’m truly in awe of the ability of words to create, sustain and grow friendships, especially across borders and time. Words connect ideas and bridge spaces in this world and connects my mind to something bigger than myself.