The oddities of writing.

It's an odd thing, to be sure.

Sitting down with the intention of creating something out of nothingness, in front of a screen with nothing but a keyboard in front of you.  Maybe it's easier than it might have been so many years ago, the task of filling up paper after paper with ink seems so much more daunting.

I suppose that the strangest thing is when you realize that the idea in your head just... isn't quite translatable into words.  When you sit down, an idea, a story, an image in your mind that you feel something of a need to share and find it so impossibly difficult.  When you can sit in front of a blank screen, that little black bar showing where you're at in your story taunting you with its stillness.  When the thoughts you've got seem both so so clear, yet so vague as you try to describe them.

But then, at the most random intervals, moments of astounding clarity seem to strike.

The words flow right through you, appearing right on the screen as you suddenly realize just how to describe what your mind is so set on.  Even better, sometimes as the words flow, small changes happen that make it even better than you'd at first anticipated.  Time seems to slow down just the littlest bit, or at least not matter as everything flows so smoothly.  Sometimes, you forget something of a little less importance than your story, sometimes, you won't even notice as the light begins to dwindle outside.

It feels good.

Even on the occasions that you sit back, looking at something you've written and grimacing at some non-existent quality you'd so hoped for, you created something that you can actually share with people.

Someone, somewhere might read it and be impacted just how you wanted them to be impacted.  They could pick it up, read it, and connect to you on some primal level that's simply impossible to explain.  They're seeing some part of you, some specific part of you that you wanted to show anyone who was willing to read what you've written.  Your story, your words, and your impact that you had to fight some part of yourself in order to get out into the world.  Through the internet, through paper, however you've distributed it.  You've managed to get some part of yourself out into the world, separate from your person while still conveying whatever message you intended.

It might only be a facsimile of what you really meant, might only be a foggy reflection in a mirror of an idea, a thought, image, and story that your mind is so perfectly grasping, but it's a part of you.  Maybe imperfect, skewed by your abilities to accurately describe it all, but still there.

You've managed to create something that could very well outlive you; or define you in another person's mind.  Given yourself another life through another medium, put some part of your mind into a place where anyone with the knowledge can read as directly into it as you allow them.  With enough practice, patience, and effort, you can bear almost anything to the world in a way that they can understand it.  An epitome of what allows for empathy, as you more or less open yourself up to other minds.

But it's hard.  Impossibly hard when you sit there and can't find out how to say exactly what it is you so desperately want to say.  When you're staring at it and shaking your head in just a little bit of disgust with your mind that so obviously isn't co-operating with you.  It's the most powerful medium in so many ways, letting us describe things to one another as accurately or vaguely as we want.  So potentially biased, so potentially confusing to one another beyond a few universal stories and ideas.  It's a tool that can both build and destroy.

Writing is one of the strangest dichotomies there is; easy during those moments where it seems to come on yet impossibly difficult when you try to force it.  Allowing you to describe reality or fantasy equally as well, bringing people closer and driving them apart through the words written and their interpretations.  A reflection of yourself, yet so imperfect in being frozen in the instant it's completed and being limited by your ability to accurately write it that we'll vehemently deny the validity of the reflection.

In short... writing is an odd thing.