My Thoughts on Writing:

 

Writing is a platform of communication unlike any other. It is like a perfectly planned snapshot of someone’s mind; if it’s good writing, each word is meticulously chosen to say exactly what is meant. Once finished, these words never change, but no interpretation of it is the same. People across the world can connect or argue over the thoughts of someone they’ve probably never met, because the author took the time to write them down. Writing depends just as much on the individuality of the reader as it does on the writer. They have an interesting relationship; people write to be heard, but more often than not don’t know who will be listening. Writing is like an agreement between both to think before speaking and to listen patiently, yet the meaning always gets altered or lost in translation. That’s the whole point of it. People write because they have something worth saying, something so important that they want to put it into someone else’s mind and let them make something of it. It’s intimidating, really, to open your thoughts to the world like that. It’s also relieving. Putting thoughts into written words forces you to figure out what you are really trying to say. My old chemistry teacher used to always say that you don’t really understand anything until you can explain it to someone else, and I think that applies to writing as well. It’s like trying to explain your own thoughts to yourself. The whole process is frustrating, and involves more use of the delete key than any of the letters, but from somewhere in the mess of sentence fragments and redundant prepositional phrases comes a great idea. I think writers learn more from what they write than their readers do.Writing is an exploration, a journey that both writers and readers embark on together to come to a common understanding. Flannery O’Connor once said, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” I think that’s why everybody should write. Writing is a learning process.