When I was in elementary school, I got my first taste of descriptive writing. My teacher gave us an assignment in which we were to pick a moment from our week, something that we normally would deem insignificant or mundane, and to describe it fully, to delve deeply into a tiny moment. I remember feeling like such an assignment was a waste of time, that I wouldn’t gain anything remarkable from it.
I was wrong.
I finally decided to write about going through a carwash with my mom after school. In the beginning, I was apathetic, thinking that this was something that I could rush through and move on with my very important nine-year-old commitments (my Webkinz was not about to take care of itself). But as I sat in front of my blank sheet of notebook paper, I felt drawn into the faded blue lines on the page that begged for a story. I sunk into my memory, trying to come up with adequate descriptives. I remember keenly searching for the words to say how bubbles blanketed the body of the car, how the conveyor belt slowly dragged us through hanging strips of blue cloth that clung to the windshield, how the water droplets chased each other down the windows. And I fell in love.
Not with the concept of a carwash of course, but I fell in love with the beauty of written word. The ability to extend an infinitesimal, instantaneous, and even insignificant moment into a drawn out song, the way kindling takes a tiny spark and creates a steady flame. Writing became a form of appreciation. It became my camera that captured memories and time, and it gave me a lens through which to view the world.
When you look at a moment through words, you pay attention better. You learn to look for the little things, to not only notice small details but to rest in them. And in that you may find more beauty and complexity that you ever thought possible. The world has so much depth. We spend so much time skimming across the surface, never questioning what would happen if we actually had the courage to dive. My nine year old intuition was right in that it’s easier to float through, but is it worth it?
Writing allows for us to rest in a moment. We rest in thought, rest in emotion, rest in detail, rest in memory, rest in the persistent clicking of the backspace key until the write words are spelled out on the page. We ruminate in language until we find a way to express our thoughts in clear and precise ways.
Writing takes the jumble of ideas in the brain and streamlines them into something that at least pretends to makes sense. Writing takes pinches of interior thought and sprinkles them across pages. Writing takes black squiggles and melts them into inky masses on the back of the retina which dissolve into meaning for a reader. Writing takes shattered pieces of who I am and slyly tucks them in the corners of turns of phrase. Writing is patient. It waits. And with every added character, it slowly builds until you are left with something beautiful, tangible, and weighted enough to pull you under the surface.
