Like bricks and mortar...

The Canadian fellow-blogger who occasionally posts here got me thinking about words, and how we use them, and how we put them together. And how words can be used to communicate, certainly – but they can also be used for decorative purposes, in a manner of speaking. I once read somewhere that Charlotte Bronte – the author of one of my favorite books, Jane Eyre – would carefully choose every single word she wrote down. She would mull over a myriad of linguistic choices in her mind before settling on the pieces of prose she felt best expressed her thoughts. Because she knew, no doubt, that each word on its own was simply an entry in the dictionary – a random bit of driftwood in an endless ocean. But lash those words together in a meaningful sequence, and they float like rafts, carrying us to different times and different places… inspiring thought and dialogue and dreams… making us believe we can travel from one place to the next on the cadence of ideas. They can be powerful things, these little arrangements of letters…

Writing is like constructing a puzzle – each word must be comfortably nestled next to its neighbor… each phrase must compliment the one before. Only after every section has been locked into place will the entire picture be visible. And if one tiny piece is missing, the entire project seems to be ruined. Of course, there’s a fine line between “complete” and “overkill.” This was something I started to realize in school, when we were given assignments to write papers that were, for example, “at least 20 pages long,” and after about 17 pages, I’d run out of things to write. I had already made my point, I had already provided the proper amount of embellishment necessary for a research paper, and anything extra would simply be “filler” material. What’s more, I was certain whoever was grading the paper would be intelligent enough to recognize filler material, and would laugh at my insistence that I had a “really, really, really, really, really interesting time writing this very, very, very, very, extremely important paper.”

So I would take a chance and turn in my three-pages-too-short paper, and be quite surprised when it was returned to me not only with a good grade, but with comments about how “concise” and “to-the-point” my paper was. After a while, I started realizing those page number requirements were really more of a guideline – I was never given a lowered grade due to a shorter paper, and I suppose it’s because when you’re writing to make a point, it’s more important that you simply make your point. It’s more important that your message is received loud and clear than for a few more slips of paper to be added for embellishment purposes. As long as the entire puzzle is complete, what more can you say?

Creative writing, of course, is a different story (pun not intended…). Embellishment is half the fun. I took a fiction writing class at St. Edward’s University a few years ago, and one of the things we talked about was the difference between “showing” and “telling” in a story. Sure, you could simply TELL your audience that, “John was angry.” Or you could SHOW them by saying something like, “John threw open the door, flung the phone across the room, and slammed his hand down on the table.” You know John is angry, but the word “angry” doesn’t even appear in the sentence. And that’s part of what I find appealing about writing – the way that words can be used like clay, and sculpted into different forms until their collective meaning is apparent. These words can form pictures as multihued and vibrant as anything hanging in the Louvre or the Met. To me, talking just seems less colorful. Then again, I probably think about these things more often than a lot of people, seeing as the ABSENCE of talking and the PRESENCE of writing almost seem to be part of what makes up my nature. Or perhaps “almost” isn’t even relevant – they ARE part of what makes up my nature.

So I think I’ll go indulge in the vibrant layers of a novel. And hopefully, when I’m finished, I will find myself in a completely different place from where I started. Because that’s the adventure of holding onto a raft made of words…