"Writing is easy, as Robert Pollard said. It really is. If you can formulate a coherent spoken sentence, the leap from that to transcription, assuming some basic literacy and a spell check program in your native language, is not such a great one. If that minimal exertion of energy is too much for you, you’re not going to make it in the arts generally—they all, by and large, demand some form of expenditure from you.
Generating the sentences is one thing, the bigger question (and the one that gets you stuck) is: what to do with the words? Writing for no audience seems tantamount to constructing a house of cards in your room, and then knocking it over without showing it to anyone. You might do that every once in a while, sure. But what if you begin to make a compulsive habit out of it? Two choices remain: either go quietly crazy, alone in your room, or confess to an interest in architecture and channel that energy in a more productive direction.
Processing of words, while less tangible a talent than balancing objects precariously on top of one another, does have some real-world application. You can sell your words for money. Unfortunately verbiage, unlike grain or dairy products, is a poorly subsidized industry, and so the market rates are low, a word being worth, on average, probably 5 – 10 cents. You can break this down further, trying to calculate whether long words or short ones will get you the best cent-to-letter ratio, but, as noted, these sorts of considerations tend to slow down, if not derail, your actual writing process.
Why write? The basic reason is communication: written language is an ancient solution to the human problem of needing to express ourselves in our full complexity. The bigger reason is influence: you get to express your philosophy through what you present and the way you frame it, through the dialogue you enter into with the reader, from the point of view you open to them. The propagandistic powers of writing were discovered early on: it’s no accident that all the major world religions are based on best-selling books, or that political speech writers can charge more than five cents for their words. Even in our globalized, free-for-all internet age, writers routinely go to jail for their dangerous vocabulary combinations. The power to influence- emotions, feelings, thoughts, opinions; to crack a joke from the grave, to make someone weep with a postcard-is what gives words their meaning and force, and this power is equally available to anyone. It’s just a question of stringing the words together in the most convincing order."
Al Burian 7.02.10 [ http://www.alburian.com/ ]
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