Writing To Understand The World

WRITING TO SORT IT ALL OUT:

A famous writer once wrote that writers write to understand the world. I believe that this is an incontestable truth. There’s simply too much well-documented evidence that we writers think with our fingers, per se. As Natalie Goldberg says in her seminal books “Writing Down The Bones” and “Wild Mind” it is of paramount importance that a writer keeps their fingers moving.

PRACTICE, PRACTICE…

There’s a famous old joke about the tourist who stopped an old violinist on a Manhattan street, asking, “Excuse me… how do I get to Carnegie Hall?” The old musician replies,” Practice! Practice!”

In the same way that a baseball player needs to hit hundreds of baseballs off tees, pitching machines, soft-tossing, and batting practice pitchers in order to hit well in an actual game, a basketball player must shoot hundreds of free throws before a game, and a painter must draw hundreds of sketches before tackling the canvas, so must a writer “Write our way into” a piece of writing. It’s how we get to Carnegie Hall.

You Write Because You’re A Writer

But enough about writing practice. Back to the original point of this post… writers write to make sense of the universe. In my humble opinion, this is far more important to our Souls and our Art than the old idea that writers write because they have “Something to say.” A platform, a soapbox, a bone to pick, an axe to grind. Boring.

My Message?

Sorry. Don’t have one. I’m a wordsmith, a storyteller, a comedian, a provocateur, and a salesman. But it’s all to entertain, to educate, to irritate, to stir up your emotions. The writer, the artist, the Content Creator is, at best, a Catalyst to help us feel. As I overheard someone say once, it doesn’t matter if it makes you feel good, or feel bad, as long as it makes you feel.

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