The Joy of Writing

Somethin' on your mind? In your heart? Niggling at you to come out and be heard??

Write about it and we will come.

Even now, my mind seems to be swirling with thoughts about words and how they can be arranged just so to lure readers to the page.

Hook us with your wily ways ...photos are nice, yes, but an enticing title and an opening sentence that promises to awaken within your audience: a desire, a debate, and passion often begins a relationship which endures.

In some hubs by other writers, folks modestly have stated they are not 'writers'. However my definition of a writer and that of others may differ.

To me a writer is someone who gathers up seemingly unrelated words, tosses them this way and that, and tries to make some sensical ( opposite of non-sensical) message, story, article, speech, sermon--- from that hodge podge. The words are arranged, rearranged, discarded, called back, considered...eventually what is longing to be shared, appears.

It may then be published for the world to see in an effort for the reader to garner some bit of wisdom, knowledge, entertainment and/or brain food from it.

Even if only one other person comes that one person has stayed long enough to read and hopefully comment. And sometimes that is enough to keep you pouring out your inner most thoughts, wishes, desires, dreams.

You write.

We will come.

What is your motive for writing? This of course is purely rhetorical but for your own personal use it is beneficial to know the answer.

Why do you bother to get up every day or however often you choose to, and write?

You sit at the computer or with your little yellow pad and you stare at the page.

And then what?

You go get coffee.

You adjust the lighting?

You remember the call you needed to make?

You must go to Amazon to see whatever it is you must purchase?

Ebay calling you?

What is that rumble in the tummy??

Excuses excuses...are you committed to writing something today or not?

And if not, get up and move away. Or not.

If making money is the motivation, then I am not the person to advise you on that.

I do not do it for that reason.

My reasons go back to the time I played the school teacher in the summers with my cousins...and I was smaller than most of them..about five was the first year I was the school marm.

I knew I HAD to write, even then, because....

"I had something to say. Something inside of me that was tumbling around, churning inside, busting at the seams to explode from within me. And, so, in my uncertain hand I scratched out word after word 'cuz I had to! It would be something I would continue to do day after day."

One of our lessons every day was to write in a journal. Something. Anything. And then we read it aloud.

Not looking for perfection in spelling or even in grammar but in hearing something about an adventure we had the day before or anticipation of an adventure that day.

Our thoughts ranged through many topics (and no these sentences were not our little kid sentences but they were what our journal entries focused on)----

The fiddler crabs moving quickly but cautiously toward us across the sand.

A periwinkle sliding ever so gracefully down a blade of grass.

The slooshin' of the water as we moved along the shoreline trying to spy a soft-shelled crab.

Frisky little spotted fish doing pirouettes just off the point of land that jutted into the creek.

Laughing hysterically as we raced through fields of corn.

Lost in Neptune's garden, allowing the waters of the Bay to carry us to a far off land.

Just some of our thoughts that we would talk about later....

That was the beginning. We learned to formulate our ideas and share them. And many of us went on to write...not for publication so much but as a way to forever hold in time those moments that would slip away faster than any one of us would imagine.

Welcoming sun's rays came. Pinks, oranges, reds, blues heralded the end of the days. Rising and setting with certainty as the end of the day folded into the dawn of the new one.

And a new type of writing began. O, the journal, now a diary--with private thoughts and it may even had a key---

Now words unspoken...only scribbled in the diary--- of new wishes and thoughts. Making new friends and feeling a stirring in my heart for that special boy that I met at camp; sat behind in Latin class; was 'best friends' with and talked to each day on the bus ride home---I was 'best friend.' to many boys as they told of adoration for this girl or that.

Dreams whispered only to the pages...for no eyes to view but mine...

Later still more secret messages were scrawled in the diary which now had become several diaries...longing to sing on a stage, to be crowned Miss Deltaville (I was not but I was in the pageant), to dance with Billy Mills at my birthday party; to be invited to THE Christmas party of the year where a real live band was to make the music we lived to dance to with a favorite partner.

In my late teen years a record of a group of young evangelists who came to speak at our church filled page after page of my latest diary. Enthralled is the word...I wanted to leave the church and go out into the world with them saving souls as they were.

And as surely as that reliable, majestic sun rose and set and rose and set, the seasons followed. More years slipped by and writing continued to evolve.

Essays now were a new phase of writing ...those not done by choice but still a wondrous exploration.

Reading Donne, Poe, Shakespeare, Hughes, Rawlings, Angelou, Dostoyevsky, Wordsworth, Kipling, Lewis, Bronte, Alcott, Stowe, Walker----only a smidge of those who would influence, shape, color, my thinking and build my personal storehouse of ideas to consider.

Peeking into the library, you would find me---stacks of books precariously situated on the table where my entry into a world of literature would hold me transfixed from that point forward.

And is that not how it happens?

The songs of the sirens, the whispers from those who have gone before us....those who had that churning feeling inside...they KNEW they HAD to write...

Could that be it?

How many of them realized that words they selected one late evening, bent over a desk, perhaps working by a candle, would become words that those yet unborn for generations to come would find as beacons leading them to the world of writing?

Did they know?

Did some of them wish perhaps their words would live on...those such as Patrick Henry whose words "Give me Liberty or Give me Death" have lived on down through the years.

Was it their foresight that lead them to pour out their innermost longings and beliefs? Many of them having very important messages for us to read.

Somehow were they aware that in times when life was far different than it was as they were writing their private feeling, tired wrestless souls would seek out their entries searching for guidance, for answers, for a diversion?

Visiting the homeplace of the woman who penned the novel, the Yearling, Marjorie Kenan Rawlings, I hoped to find answers to the mystique that surrounds one whose work is still relished today after all of these years.

Published in 1938 the novel is a love story of sorts with nature and youth and a coming of age story set back when Florida was not the Florida of Disney and Sea World but a time of surviving off the land in the piney woods. Marjorie won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel in 1939 and to my way to thinking it was her best work even though she went on to publish others.

As I strolled the property, which I have done a number of times, as it it only a ten minute drive from my home, I feel her there. I can see her sitting on the porch engulfed in her stories drawing energy from her surroundings.

Cross Creek is still a tiny village ---no hustle and bustle there-- not even one traffic light--the main attraction is her home place.

Down the road, a spit away is the Yearling Restaurant which has a lot of character and does draw locals and would-be visitors on their way to somewhere.

Each time I go there I am lost in time. As I close the tiny metal gate and step onto the property, I feel what she must have felt. Muses everywhere. Inviting, wooing me, to come and sit and absorb.

I get it. I understand how she could write there...I am energized and reawakened each time I am drawn to visit there.

Write about it...they will come...just as the words 'if you build it, they will come' from Field of Dreams says...it is true. They came to watch baseball games when no one believed they would except for the man who built it...

Write what you feel, think, see, wish, dream and someone will come.

Someone will come to agree, commiserate, argue, disagree, praise, correct...whatever the reason...it makes for interesting dialogue and discussion.

If thoughts are tumbling around within and begging to spill out, sit down at a computer and pound away.

Grab a pen and paper and scribble.

Turn on a recorder.

Videos work nicely too.

You may not wish to publish what you produce for whatever reason but you will have begun a lifelong romance with words no matter what your age.