Talk on the page

[cosmolinguist]

You should write more, this stranger says. And I agree.

you will live more curiously if you write. You will become a scientist, if not of the natural world than of whatever world you care about. More of that world will pop alive. You will see more when you look at it.

When I have a piece of writing in mind, what I have, in fact, is a mental bucket: an attractor for and generator of thought. It’s like a thematic gravity well, a magnet for what would otherwise be a mess of iron filings. I’ll read books differently and listen differently in conversations. In particular I’ll remember everything better; everything will mean more to me. That’s because everything I perceive will unconsciously engage on its way in with the substance of my preoccupation. A preoccupation, in that sense, is a hell of a useful thing for a mind.

Writing needn’t be a formal enterprise to have this effect. You don’t have to write well. You don’t even have to “write,” exactly — you can just talk onto the page.

I really like that way of describing it. Personal blogging like we're all doing here does feel a lot like talking on the page. I'm so grateful to everyone who has conversations with me here.

Comments

[otter]

Some of my strongest friendships are built this way

[cosmolinguist]

Same! It's how I met my ex-husband, it's arguably one of the reasons that D and I got as close as we did (we used to chat every day on LJ messenger back when that was a thing!)

[suzannareads]

Thank you for continuing to write!

[cosmolinguist]

Thank you for reading!

[brittdreams]

When I have a piece of writing in mind, what I have, in fact, is a mental bucket: an attractor for and generator of thought.
This resonates with me. I need to do better about actually sitting down to write those things when they do come to mind. I have a lot of ideas for my journal that never make it to the page/screen.

[cosmolinguist]

I have that same problem!

[angelofthenorth]

ooh, I like that.

[ashelterofpages]

Oooh, I really love the way writing is talked about here. I'm not sure how i approach blogging/non-fic writing, but this doesn't feel wrong.

[cosmolinguist]

I'm glad you loved it. :) I do too.

[skibbley]

Like!

[silveradept]

The interesting thing there, that the piece doesn't go into, is that you also then find out that different people do writing differently, some that absolutely resonates with you, some that entertains, some that informs, and some that looks a bit like a spiderweb of things that glistens in the morning dew and only shows the connecting lines when there's something that's attached to the web to make it obvious.

Talking onto the page is very much a working thing for me, often because if I'm talking something through, whether on the keyboard or with sound, I will stumble across the key insight that I needed to find somewhere in the middle of it, and then either delightfully or dreadfully go back to revise the beginning in light of having learned what I wanted to work the whole piece around. Often I have the thought in mind when I start, but it's usually after putting down some amount of words that I realize what I want to do with that thought and how to structure things.

Write more, more people, please! You never know exactly what your writing thing will do for someone else.