Typing Away

Why do I write? Why do any of us write?

Type, type, type. Typing away. Whatever word tickles my fancy today shall be typed post haste. Type, type, type. What causes a writer to type his life away? Is it some unknown force? Is it something deep within? Perhaps it is none of the above. It could be all of the below.

Emotional cognizance is not really a requirement when it comes to typing out one's ruminations. Not at all. No, sir. No one really knows what the trigger is for the entire writing game. I suspect it is a multitude of certainties.

I read Shakespeare and Whitman religiously. I see a lot of myself in their works but I guess that is to be expected. Like every writer; we write from a very personal state of mind. Words tend to be universal by nature. There is no other tendency. There is no other way.

I'd like to be able to multiply and divide words with the same ease that a mathematician multiplies and divides numbers. Is that a lot to ask? If I take one word and try to converge it with another word it always feels a bit artificial.I think it is best that way. Well, not the best of the best but somewhat of the best.

Last night I wrote a short story that involved a slice of cheese and two hungry cats. I had originally decided on making the cats fight over the cheese slice but then opted for bringing the cheese slice to life and turn on the cats. The rest of the story became much too melancholic to be taken serious so I placed it in a drawer.

My brain is essentially a file cabinet. The human brain in general is one monolithic filing cabinet. It can also be a computer and many other metaphors. Whenever I observe a scene I don't just analyze the scene; I imagine what that scene would look like during a different era. Then I imagine what experiences might occur at that exact moment in time. Seems like a lot to ponder but I do like to ponder a lot.

Now I must take a short break. A respite if you will. I must edit one of my many fruitful compositions. When I say edit I mean I must morph one story into another story. Afterwards, I might just read some Shakespeare or Whitman. Perhaps both.

Type, type, type. The typing will continue on well into eternity. I am all the better for it.

Reviews

[Dean Kuch®]

You really got into ALL writers heads with this one! What truly makes a writer...write?
For some who are published, it is to fulfill a contractual obligation to their literary agents and to their publishers, nothing more, nothing less. When that happens it's really a shame. The individuals who have read their earlier works begin to pick up on this and, eventually, go on to something else.
For unpublished writers who have no monetary obligations attached to their works, it is a driving passion and some internal 'trigger', as you so eloquently stated in this piece. We just do it because we can and we have to. It is our ilk.
I enjoyed the part about our brains being one monolithic filing cabinet, for that is precisely what they are. They store memory. They record and save experiences and file them away for future reference. And, to an aspiring author, their brains SCREAM!!! at them to simply type...TYPE...TYPE......!
Thanks for sharing this, I really enjoyed reading it. Oh, and by the way...you still got that Cat and Cheese thing lyin' around? Oh well, just askin'...

[siddhartha288]

@Dean Kuch Thank you very much for your review. My brain is constantly screaming at me. I have several different drafts of the Cat and Cheese story lying around. I'll type one of them up and post it later. :-)