It’s hard to put in words exactly how I feel sometimes. Sometimes, it’s like all the words are right there in my head; except they’re not words; they’re images and colors and light. It’s not usually that I don’t have enough words to create whatever it is that I need to create; it’s that there are far too many words for me to possibly choose just a few. They circle behind my eyes, just out of my reach, just beyond comprehension.
There was a day a long time ago when I could write anything and its meaning would be exactly what you read; exactly what you saw there on the page, and I was okay with it. That day passed, and my life became more complicated—I became more complicated. Everything has meaning these days. I can see it in between the lines and curves on the page.
Writing isn’t so much creating art with words; it’s creating words with feelings. Writing is coming up with an idea that means so much to you that you can barely even express it and then covering it with a mess of letters and punctuation and plot and characters. Writers bury meanings like pirates bury treasure and it takes a true map reader to find the gold.
There are some emotions that can’t quite be expressed in the English language. It is an author’s job to find a way to convey these wordless enigmas. As a child I used to say that writers were like wizards—always doing the impossible. Every pencil was a magic wand, laden with responsibility and significance. Every sentence was an incantation, giving life to ideas that could change the world.
The first time I wrote a story, I fell in love with the idea of creating another world. I wrote for days on end, concluding the narrative after almost a year of writing non-stop. I imagined a brave eight-year-old, abandoned by her parents, adopted by a rich millionaire. Surrounded by conspiracy theories and a strange interest from her adopted father in her somehow-inherited spying abilities, she began to suspect something was wrong. Later, she would discover that her government-spy parents actually were alive, hidden in her adoptive father’s basement. It didn’t make sense, and it didn’t have proper grammar or spelling, but it was something. It was a start.
Beginnings are easy for me. Endings are harder.
Sometimes I imagine the day I graduate from high school, walk out of my favorite classrooms, and never come back. How hard will it be to leave behind all the memories I’ve left here? How difficult will it be to say goodbye to people I will never speak to again?
However, the true nature behind endings is far more virtuous and pure than most people imagine. After all, something can only start after something else ends.
Most of the time when I write something the meaning comes to me long after I’ve written it. I only write until I can’t feel what I felt in the beginning—until I can’t feel anything at all. Emotions stream from my soul straight onto the paper like heavy rainfall, and when the rain finally stops, there’s nothing left in the cloud of my mind. My heart gives itself away so completely that I don’t have a heart at all, leaving my entire body vacant, and free to float away. That’s when I know that everything I wanted to say isn’t in my head anymore. Instead, it’s on the page in front of me. I can only hope that my passion is contagious, and that it will ensnare some other helpless human.
Endings always come slower than I imagine and this one is particularly overdue. There is a meaning in here somewhere, hiding between words and sentences and spaces. I won’t try and find it – not today, maybe not ever. I’ll leave that to the map readers.
something was wrong. Later, she would discover that her government-spy parents actually were alive, hidden in her adoptive father’s basement. It didn’t make sense, and it didn’t have proper grammar or spelling, but it was something. It was a start.
Beginnings are easy for me. Endings are harder.
Sometimes I imagine the day I graduate from high school, walk out of my favorite classrooms, and never come back. How hard will it be to leave behind all the memories I’ve left here? How difficult will it be to say goodbye to people I will never speak to again?
However, the true nature behind endings is far more virtuous and pure than most people imagine. After all, something can only start after something else ends.
Most of the time when I write something the meaning comes to me long after I’ve written it. I only write until I can’t feel what I felt in the beginning—until I can’t feel anything at all. Emotions stream from my soul straight onto the paper like heavy rainfall, and when the rain finally stops, there’s nothing left in the cloud of my mind. My heart gives itself away so completely that I don’t have a heart at all, leaving my entire body vacant, and free to float away. That’s when I know that everything I wanted to say isn’t in my head anymore. Instead, it’s on the page in front of me. I can only hope that my passion is contagious, and that it will ensnare some other helpless human.
Endings always come slower than I imagine and this one is particularly overdue. There is a meaning in here somewhere, hiding between words and sentences and spaces. I won’t try and find it – not today, maybe not ever. I’ll leave that to the map readers.