Working at an assisted living facility awhile back provided me with the opportunity to view life and its intricacies through the eyes of elderly people who were simply living out their final years as comfortably as possible. One man, who wasn't as old as the typical assisted living resident is but who had issues that warranted round-the-clock monitoring, told me something interesting not long before we parted ways. He said, "You see far, and you feel deeply." Later, when I thought about it, I realized that he had never had very much to go on to be able to form that opinion of me. And I was, needless to say, touched by his spot assessment of me.
I don't think there is a writer alive who could do what we do if he or she did not "see far and feel deeply." Writing is as public a display of emotion as is standing on a street corner screaming or crying or on a building ledge getting ready to jump. While it certainly is a more quiet and a less overtly violent endeavor, it is no less deep and no less sincere.
I will go out on a limb here as far as to say that pulling words from our brains is sometimes, if not usually, physically painful. It certainly can be draining, as is evidenced by anyone who has seen a writer push himself or herself back from a desk in sheer exhaustion. Writing is risky business, especially once the dam breaks and the words come tumbling out, not to be contained. We have no choice but to allow them to cascade down, as there is no hope of damming them up again until they've spent themselves and are nothing more than a trickle. And then, even if we do manage to block its path with a rock or a branch, whatever seeps into the ground is lost forever.
Or is it?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1530989876
Showing posts with label emotion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emotion. Show all posts
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Monday, May 26, 2014
What Stories Are Made Of
Words are magical things. In them reside all our experiences, our thoughts, ideas, hopes, dreams, fears, and joys. In other words (pun intended), "words" sum up who we are. And there isn't a single word in any language that cannot stand on its own without needing to be embellished by others. All words began as sounds, and a sound can convey a great deal of meaning and emotion without any explanation at all.
We take words so much for granted. For in the course of a single day, we read, shape our thoughts, hear, or speak millions of them without giving a single thought to the role that each one of them plays in that process. And any writer knows that any piece of writing begins with a single idea, and that idea can be reduced to a single word. For even the most seemingly inconsequential word has meaning and purpose, on its own and when used with others, and not just nouns, verbs and adjectives. Articles, conjunctions, and prepositions all imply something by their very nature and how they are used in sentences. And even when stated alone, a single article--the, for example--has more to say than is intially apparent.
At its most fundamental, we know that "the" is an article. By itself, it means nothing, or does it? For the moment we say it, once, twice, three times, we realize that it DOES say something by implication. "The" immediately implies the need for another word, but what is that word? For starters, the choice of whatever word it implies is left entirely to the speaker or the writer. Thus, the word "the" opens up a possibility, an outcome, the existence of an object that the writer or speaker will eventually elaborate upon. From that point on, whatever new word that is associated with "the" will assign it a whole new meaning and purpose.
Now let's take a very familiar noun: cat. As soon as we hear, say, or write the word, we know instantly what we're referring to, for the word's basic meaning unstructs as to its attributes. So right away, we know we're not dealing with a dog, an elephant, or a snake. So that shifts our focus from all other creatures and onto a cat. Then, our minds take over, and we start remembering what we know about cats, which in some cases is more or less than others do. But we all know something, and that is what we bring to our understanding of the word "cat."
The natural question that follows is thus, "What about the cat?" This is where the author's or speaker's mind kicks in and starts attributing characteristics to the cat, and that is how ideas come together, through an immutable law of attraction. In order to grow in meaning, a single word must attract others or die. But it's not like a tree absorbing nutrients from the soil. It's more like one snowflake attracting others until it is no longer a single flake but an entire snow bank that has to be shovelled. Or to use a more fitting analogy--one building block is relatively useless unless others are added to it, which ultimately results in some sort of structure.
That is what writing is--starting with one word, one idea, and then adding others to it until it eventually takes on a life of its own as an entirely different entity from the one that gave it life. And in that way, writing is also a metaphor for everything that exists in this world that got its start in the very same way.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
We take words so much for granted. For in the course of a single day, we read, shape our thoughts, hear, or speak millions of them without giving a single thought to the role that each one of them plays in that process. And any writer knows that any piece of writing begins with a single idea, and that idea can be reduced to a single word. For even the most seemingly inconsequential word has meaning and purpose, on its own and when used with others, and not just nouns, verbs and adjectives. Articles, conjunctions, and prepositions all imply something by their very nature and how they are used in sentences. And even when stated alone, a single article--the, for example--has more to say than is intially apparent.
At its most fundamental, we know that "the" is an article. By itself, it means nothing, or does it? For the moment we say it, once, twice, three times, we realize that it DOES say something by implication. "The" immediately implies the need for another word, but what is that word? For starters, the choice of whatever word it implies is left entirely to the speaker or the writer. Thus, the word "the" opens up a possibility, an outcome, the existence of an object that the writer or speaker will eventually elaborate upon. From that point on, whatever new word that is associated with "the" will assign it a whole new meaning and purpose.
Now let's take a very familiar noun: cat. As soon as we hear, say, or write the word, we know instantly what we're referring to, for the word's basic meaning unstructs as to its attributes. So right away, we know we're not dealing with a dog, an elephant, or a snake. So that shifts our focus from all other creatures and onto a cat. Then, our minds take over, and we start remembering what we know about cats, which in some cases is more or less than others do. But we all know something, and that is what we bring to our understanding of the word "cat."
The natural question that follows is thus, "What about the cat?" This is where the author's or speaker's mind kicks in and starts attributing characteristics to the cat, and that is how ideas come together, through an immutable law of attraction. In order to grow in meaning, a single word must attract others or die. But it's not like a tree absorbing nutrients from the soil. It's more like one snowflake attracting others until it is no longer a single flake but an entire snow bank that has to be shovelled. Or to use a more fitting analogy--one building block is relatively useless unless others are added to it, which ultimately results in some sort of structure.
That is what writing is--starting with one word, one idea, and then adding others to it until it eventually takes on a life of its own as an entirely different entity from the one that gave it life. And in that way, writing is also a metaphor for everything that exists in this world that got its start in the very same way.
https://www.amazon.com/Rachel-Lovejoy/e/B00JJ259DS
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