On Writing
Reflections, reasoning out loud, and trying to figure things out before I forget.
I hate writing.1 I really do. It truly feels like the mental equivalent of taking your head between your hands and smashing it into a brick wall over and over again, until you’ve scuffed off the tiniest layer of sand and used said floor-sand as evidence to convince yourself that you’re going to bust through eventually. There’s more proof of your efforts on the floor (near-microscopic particles of the aforementioned bricks) and to your face (I don’t even want to think about this) than on this wall we’re so desperately attempting to surmount.
Why is this? Why is something pretty much everyone does every day2 and that’s such a mainstay of civilized life so painful?
It might be very well because the amorphous vagaries that populate our3 skulls seem so beautiful or profound and just understandable when they’re floating around our minds. They’re representations of complicated concepts; they’re motivations of arguments you want to make to your friends; they’re profound articulations of truths about ourselves and the world.
When you actually try to put that nebulous idea that feels so brilliant into words, words that perhaps a fellow human being might understand, the thing that comes out has always got something misshapen about it. And no matter how many times we try, so often it’s just a slightly different sort of ugly. Nothing could represent the *ahem* elegance4 of that thought.
And so we resort to perseverance: you might take these representations of things in your mind and just keep on trying to pound your head into that wall hoping it gives. Only to find out quickly that the result of this endeavor is a vast collection of failure states. One way of saying something just doesn’t come out the way you wanted. One just feels wrong and clunky. One seems fine, but then when you consider how a reasonable person might comprehend it, they’ll very likely take away something that you didn’t mean to say. The next attempt just doesn’t sound meaningful, and you’re not even sure what’s missing. The last one is too trite. And so we continue to wander endlessly.
And yet your very own personal re-enactment of Groundhog Day5 (but for writing) is totally fine because it’s worth something quite important. These attempts chip away at what your ideas are not. Those messy words and myriad attempts give shape to thought, at first rough, but later coalescing into something real. This act distills thought into structure, something repeatable, legible, transforming it into the common currency of the mind.
None of this is to say I’m great at it by any means. But let this serve as a reminder to just keep trying, because when it comes down to it, “failing” in writing is nothing more than a means of honing those notions, those vagaries, those (so-called brilliant) ideas into something, not just for others, but to achieve some measure of clarity for yourself. And once recorded, this clarity, unlike memory, is preserved forever6. To be clarified, built on, struck down, rebuilt, and developed forever more.
That wall is an illusion. What feels like beating your head against a wall is actually the natural process of sculpting your thoughts.
You need to give me some credit on this one—I’m trying. Some of you actually like writing or don’t have a love-hate relationship with it. If that’s you, this piece isn’t for you, but you may continue for your own amusement at my folly.
I’m pretty sure most people write about three pages worth of text just on their phones per day no citation because I’m not looking it up.
I can only speak for myself here.
This is where I have to question whether I simply have too high an opinion of the potential drivel floating around my head.
I couldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t use this opportunity to plug Edge of Tomorrow, a similar and excellent movie.
Unless you password protect seven years worth of journals and forget what teenage you would have used for the password. Surely not speaking from personal experience.