Thursday, June 20, 2013

What is Enjoyable About Writing?


This is, obviously a deeply personal question that there is no one answer to. To some people, I'm sure, the process of writing is what is enjoyable. To most, it would seem, coming up with ideas is what's enjoyable. If writing itself was enjoyable to more people, there would not be as relatively few novelists as there are.

So, which parts of the writing process are enjoyable for me?

I veer dangerously close to the large part of the population who have ideas but never do anything with them. When I am thinking up an idea for a story, whether short or novel-length, I am free. To use a banality, my mind has wings and my imagination soars. When I sit at the laptop and try to put it into words, it is a struggle to do justice to my thoughts. Writing, put in another way, is a struggle to make a perfect idea real through the imperfect medium of text.

Second, I enjoy having written. When something is finished. Sadly, I don't often give myself much time to dwell on this since I know that I must continue writing, continue practicing, continue trying to hone the craft. But even so, it is being done that is most pleasant to me. To have finished the work, not to actually do the work.

And finally, there are those moments that come a few times every day and disappear after a few minutes, times where you are almost hypnotized. For a little while, the words flow just right, and you truly feel like you are almost able to do justice to your thoughts.

This is what writing is, for me. I suppose it is a little depressing, from the outside, that my dream is to do something that will see me struggling and always failing to express myself as I want to.

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