Writers and Writing - Article by Ocean
Most of us write something on something. Even if it’s raging graffiti or just angsty scribblings of expression or even stick-figuring to let your feelings vent most of us write. Even to stab at the ground with a twig is writing. Or even air writing to trace the stars at night. We primates are fingery and holdy about things in our fingers and our fingers are the routes out from the triggers fired off in the brain, so… don’t let anyone tell you he or she doesn’t write. We all do.
And even before “writing” was invented, we wrote and talked and these noises and vocalizations somehow meandered through eternity fueled by our emotions and found a way out through those limbs down to the old fingers and the famous opposing thumb. Alphabets aside, thinking in words and pictures are the same thing since words stand in for both emotions and for pictures for places and events and for imaginary worlds and airy inventions that haven’t found creation yet.
Writing is cool, essentially.All animals do it but maybe not as formally as we do.We’ve compartmentalized ourselves into a neat little package of beliefs that are unsubstantiated where we’re always the center of everything. The other animals sit around and wonder at it, I’m sure.
Anyway, they all express themselves to. Throwing coconuts down onto a meanie’s head is as much writing as is a headline of the New York Times. Head-butting just as much writing as War and Peace. And a crow squawking on a fence is as much writing as is 50-cent giving out with diatribes as is the Guernica as is Woody Guthrie twanging as is Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.
Degrees are the only difference and I just mean – open your mind and notice what a weird thing writing really is, and how cool.
That a feeling can find it’s way to being into the mind and clothe itself in a made-up picture and into a thought and into a word and into a way to communicate that word.
Writing is the way out of a lot of things. The pen is mightier than the sword and so many wars and revolutions have been started with just a little written dynamite that the power of the word really speaks for itself – and loudly. Or softly.
Even though people who never learn to read have way better memories than those who learn to depend on written words, reading still bestows a wealth of experience – a way of mind-reading and time-traveling and understanding that few of the ones who still don’t know how to read would not envy.
To wield the pencil is to hold power in one’s hand, but to make abstract symbols on paper come alive is quite another thing. The magi among us, the shamans and shamanesses like, for instance, Toni Morrison, who’s captivating power of words ensnared me when I first picked up one of her books somewhere and read only a few lines can literally create worlds through words. Words that literally climbed out of the page and coalesced into a vine, a living thing, strung with colors and images and wound themselves around my mind and my soul. She is a master.
There are only a few real masters in, of, any element, and their charisma and skill is well beyond that of ordinary mortals.I want to commend them here. To honor and applaud them and to turn you onto them. Beware their wicked spells, because they really are capable of awesome things.
Something is at work in our universe that grows out of a certain type of fecundity of spirit. Great writers and other artists have this and it’s far more than mere talent. And works have their own lives to lead. They express themselves. Who knows? Maybe they choose their own vehicles and not the other way around. It certainly feels that way at times.
I like to write songs, but really, I compose music, and the melodies just sort of create themselves - they just appear in my mind. And the lytics, too, sort of create themselves and I merely give them expression. Writing is fun on subjects I enjoy, and I don’t include myself in this secret tribe of shamen, by the way, and I advocate it for everyone. We can’t all be geniuses but thankfully we can all enjoy their artistry. I’m going to have this page for links to writings and info on some masters I really admire.
I’ve gone into other worlds and have been transformed by the magic of many of these writers, so…I’d like to share the secrets of their existence with you. Some are ultra-famous still, others more obscure. I may not keep up with every writer on the new horizons but whenever a book falls into my hand, or an article, and when it begins a life of its’ own, unbidden, I know I’ve stumbled again upon a magician, so..
I have so many favorite authors – too many to name, but I’ll spotlight a few here. Some are enormously known and some need to be recognized more.Every life is an adventure, and some of these heroes of mine led amazingly interesting lives. Without that sense of adventure, who’d want to read their ideas anyway ?
The tedious lists of people writing even best-sellers who know absolutely nothing about life don’t interest me any more than do the makers of recipe films or music. In this day of blogdom, everyone writes who can grab onto a laptop. It’s no great feat to string words together in imitative ways or through formulas learned at school.The geniuses still exist, though, who can stir the blood of people seated in easy chairs.This gift is still a marvel, and I’ll focus on the ones I think should be applauded as I continue to find more heroes to exalt in this little Pantheon of mine.
Would you like to know of a great place to post your own writings ? Articles, blogs, and promo on your novels? Visit Novelist, and create your own pages!
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