Interesting Thoughts
Sometimes I have thoughts about creativity and writing. Sometimes I find them interesting. Sometimes I write them down here. Sometimes other people also find them interesting. perhaps you will be one of those. If so you can subscribe to my newsletter and I will send you new interesting thoughts every so often, and we can both be interesting together.
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Why Write?
There is a place you sometimes get to in creativity, but perhaps in writing especially, where it no longer feels like the words are coming out of your head, but rather that you are uncovering something that already existed. That Mr McArthur always had a dodgy hip and a foul temper, that the songs that the trees sing was alway in the key of B minor, that little Josh would always fall out of the tree no matter what we did. I don't know if it’s magic or the subconscious - perhaps those are just two words for the same thing - but it feels important to me, this sense of scraping away the soil of your mind to find a story. More important than being efficient, or having a plan, or a publishing deal. ​​
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It’s the job of a writer to tell the truth. Not the easy, measurable truths of science - important though they are - but the much more slippery truths of what it means to be a human being walking through the world with their eyes wide open. That is a much more difficult task. If you try it you will find that you get it wrong often, letting little glimmers of agenda and bias and - god forbid - plot twist your characters away from where they were headed. The reader will know immediately. But sometimes, just sometimes, if you keep at it you will strike gold. And that is a feeling like jumping into a lake on a summers day whilst drinking your first sip of coffee and listening to Beethoven’s 9th symphony all at the same time! You’ll feel like you’ve dropped a little piece of light into a world that is weary of its own darkness. It’s for those moments that I write.
That, and all the time you get to spend in coffee shops!
The second reason that I write is you. I know that’s a sickly, syrupy cliche and I should be ashamed of myself, But it’s true - most cliches are - and I said I would tell the truth. I desperately want you to read these words. These words that I dug out of the corners of myself, that I shed tears over, and got excited about. The hundreds of words that stayed and the thousands that weren’t quite right and went to the big waste paper basket in the sky. I want you to meet the people I’ve met in these stories. I want you to be scared when the shadow flits past the window or maybe tear up a bit when all is lost. I know I did.
The magic of writing is telepathy. I write you about a furry little caterpillar called Bodrick and there he is! Poof! Popping into your mind like a fluff covered genie, winking at you giving you a thumbs up. Good old Bodrik! And because of this magic of human imagination, I am excited for you to visit the places I;ve been. I want other human soul to resonate with these stories. Why is that so important?
Every so often you read someone who describes something so perfectly that you wonder if they might have somehow been inside your head. “Me too!” you whisper, and suddenly - though it was only a description of the way the dog wagged her tail, or the way the scalp of the baby’s head smelled, or the first breath of air on a cold winter’s morning - suddenly you feel a little less alone in the world. The blackness is not quite so dark, nor the greyness so drab. If ever some words of mine take another person that way, then it was all worth it. I loved being inside these little worlds for a time and meeting the characters that live there. I’m excited for you to meet them too.
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