On Writing
No, it’s not about Stephen King’s book… it’s about writing (which, I guess, is what his book is all about!).
Words are wonderful things. Words are hurtful things. You can take an idea in your head and share it with the world (or with the people in your world). It becomes bigger now that you have expressed it in words. As the dialogue in the movie V for Vendetta goes:
Creedy: Bollocks. Whatchya gonna do, huh? We’ve swept this place. You’ve got nothing. Nothing but your bloody knives and your fancy karate gimmicks. We have guns.
V: No, what you have are bullets, and the hope that when your guns are empty I’m no longer be standing, because if I am you’ll all be dead before you’ve reloaded.
Creedy: That’s impossible. Kill him.
[the fingermen open fire on V, but he still stands after their clips are empty]
V: My turn.
[V proceeds to kill all fingermen with his knives before they manage to reload]
Creedy: [desperately shooting at the approaching V] Die! Die! Why won’t you die?… Why won’t you die?
V: Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.
With the written word, you can be specific in your meaning. You have time (one hopes, anyway) to read your words, re-read your words, and review your words to make sure you are conveying the message you want out there. There is no going back once a word has been spoken – it’s out there, heard by your audience. But with the written word, you have that control, that ability to soften or harden your meaning. As a practical matter, you have control of the printed word. I am writing this on Thursday July 31, 2008 at roughly 7 pm – but when will I post it for all to see? And how much will it have changed from the time I started to the time I publish it?
But the danger in the written word is in the tone. When you speak, you have a tone – in fun, in seriousness, in desperation, in love. When the words are written, the tone is not always heard in the manner it was meant to be. Emails are dangerous that way. Ever get an email, asking a question of you? It is simple enough: “why did you do this?”, but the tone is not simple. Is it really saying – hey, you’re an idiot – why did you do that? Or is it saying – hey, I’m worried about you – this isn’t like you at all? Or did the author mean to say – hey, this is not what I wanted you to do – and now you’re in trouble. There is, of course, the context of the entire message to help you figure out the tone. But sometimes, our first impression of the tone is not the correct one, but the one that sticks with us anyway. I’ve had entire days ruined by an email taken the wrong way, even when I’ve known it was taken the wrong way.
So writing this blog has made me think about the words I use, both in written and spoken form. I think I’ve always felt it easier to express myself in written form as opposed to spoken word. I can get flustered, forgetful, nervous and terrified when speaking. I have always been a shy person, not the first to say hi or join a group. It’s only within the last ten years or so that I have found my inner voice give way to an outer voice. I would never have dreamed of reading at the church pulpit 15 years ago, but I do it now. I also get up in front of the church and speak. I’ve joked that for the first 25 years of my life I never spoke in church and now they can’t get me to shut up!
But writing this blog has reminded me of how much I like to write. I wrote on my very first post that I hoped I would write well, and I still hope that. Sometimes it’s a bit discouraging that no one writes back. But I will keep on writing, even if it’s to myself.