There is something utterly fascinating about the written way in which words work.
Not passages, not sentences, not fragmented phrases. Words. Ink or graphite on a page, typed or written by hand, in scattered scrawls or set structures, a rainbow of hues or a simple, staggering black. However, they are dressed, words mean power in the right hands, pain in the wrong ones, and purpose if one is willing to put in the time to know them.
Words are the essential foundation of meaning - a person can’t read between the lines or even read the lines themselves if the lines don’t exist. Words build ideas from the ground up and provide shelter against the criticisms of the world until those ideas can stand on their own.
There is something of an art in crafting writing for the moment in which it belongs.
No matter what you are trying to say as a writer, you have to build your words up in such a way that they will fit into the lives of the people you are trying to reach. Writing connects others, builds relationships, establishes common ground. It would be easy enough to take the simplest of routes to get there, but writing has never been a simple act.
Writing is saturated with the emotions and the soul of the writer, even if they aren’t applicable to the material being said.
Writing something of value is not done by accident, even if the right words come from places you least expect and at times that seem utterly random. Writing is the product of facing the world around you and pouring your perspective onto a page. Your perspective on the world around you, on the people who stand beside you, on the lessons you learn as you live day by day.
There is something fundamentally crucial about the relationship between what you say and how you say it.
What you say and how you say it. Ironically enough, a strong relationship between the two is something beyond words.
It is hard to describe the way that connotation works - how a word that has the exact same definition can mean something entirely different - or how smoothing out the basic ebb and flow of a sentence can make a point stronger.
It is hard to capture how lengthy, flourishing sentences can paint a picture of the most epic proportions, evoking emotion in such mighty waves that the reader is drawn into a world of possibilities they never knew existed.
It is hard to say how short lines spell power.
But what can be expressed is that there is something to writing that transcends substance. There are factors of sound and connotation and weight and placement of emphasis and structure that make writing what it is, that make the worst of writings airily weak, that make the best of writings indescribably strong, that provide the ever-captivating challenge of fitting together the right words into a artistic puzzle of the best possible content.
There is something about the writing of which writers cannot get enough, and I doubt any want that.
To get enough would mean being satisfied with the writing that exists in the world at the moment and feeling as though it can stop here. But for all of the brilliantly written works that exist, that horizon of the unknown beckons unceasingly. There is more to be said, there is more to be thought up, there is more to be done.
There is more to be written.