Why Do You Write?: Reading & Creative Writing Assignment
I don’t remember beginnings.
I don’t remember not writing.
I don’t remember thinking that grammar was someone else’s problem.
I don’t remember when I realized being honest was compelling.
I don’t remember being told to stop.
Writing is a solitary act of ritual. As much a place I go as observance performed. I write in monastic silence. I write as early as possible in the morning. It keeps the mind fresh. They say. An act performed in private but for public consumption. There’s no heroic typing happening here, nimrod. No noisy cinematic clatter of keys against crisp, urgent foolscap. Just the quiet industry of thinking through sentence. Editing more than writing. Collaged carpentry which never finishes rearranging the order of things. Staring into space. Arrivals confined to temporary station stops. Of writing without typing. Traveling without moving. Coffee black as midnight on a moonless night. The kind of writing pursued but which also hunts you. A lasting thought lost forever before sleep. Traces of dreams evaporating as I wake. A forbidden place muted behind the curtain.
Do I write to calm the cacophony of thoughts in my head? To get an inside… out?
Is it medicament to type out an idea with such rampant fervor as to lose oneself to the music?
Am I building worlds of my own or simply observing the one I’m already in?
The onanism brought about by the self-satisfied arrogance of basking in the glow of one’s own work?
Would I feel less like me if it was all taken away by a vengeful god?
I have recently begun the ritual of keeping a writing journal. Its entries are a place I have been going every morning, and the writing within them a location I visit before my professional day begins. Some begin their day at the gym. I have been getting my reps in with a daybook. Working with the constraint of trying to remember the trace of a dream from the night before, I begin by visualizing whatever remains, usually a single image, then writing into it. It has offered me the opportunity to exponentially expand the range of subjects I might write about, as well as afforded me places inside of which to truly experiment with form. They are all more laboratory than document.
I don’t know where the ideas come from. I just know that they come.
I don’t know where it will lead until I start typing. When I stop I still haven’t arrived.
I don’t know that endings are ever really that final. Everyone wants the last word.
I don’t know what the reader’s hand feels like. But I am fascinated by the shape of the stone.
I don’t know what I’ll write tomorrow. But future me will thank me for writing today.
The individual entires are reflective of my daily approach of writing into the traces of dreams, rarely without a plan of where they are going to go until I begin typing. This has characterized a diverse set of stories which have concerned stowaways and those who would help them, what might happen if foreign investment started to buy up America’s declining cities, and even a tale of undersea exploration from the viewpoint of a Soviet dog.
I know any sufficiently advanced writing is indistinguishable from magic.
I know not writing makes me feel sick.
I know writing is a lot more than what you type.
I know the publish button holds no forgiveness.
I know you can learn a lot from being silent.
They’re markers in the sand. Sometimes they wash away, but often they stick around, asking to be revisited. With a growing inventory, they are becoming a rich archive of places to return, spend time with, and ultimately write back into and expand. They serve as an infinite library of ideas, where a Borgesian writer’s road ahead stretches out to the horizon in life-giving cinematic technicolor. In further cultivating the place I go every morning, I am continuing to build upon the habits which have worked well. Silence is important. Coffee is important. A visual starting component is important. All of these need to be checked off first before the train can leave the station. But when it does, it tends to pick up speed swiftly, and the sense of creative accomplishment provided before I begin my professional work day at 9am has been wonderfully energizing. I am more frequently losing myself to the writing. Over the course of the class I’ve built an inventory of almost thirty short pieces (which are being collected at https://www.anthologymatt.com/labs and include pieces from this class). I can’t wait to find out what happens next, and am excited to have finally built the muscles of writing habit I have been seeking for so long.
