David Foster Wallace once wrote, “How odd I can have all this inside me but to you it’s just words.” This is the dilemma of the writer. To share or not to share. You have discovered something, somehow, and it makes sense to you in the words you found. But what about the reader? Do you have to rearrange the words for them? Do you have to find new ones? And why do you need to share them anyway? Because it’s nice to share, I suppose. Sometimes we remember one who shared and what they shared. And it helped us on our journey. And there is a school of thought that suggests we are a neural network. Each node transmitting and receiving data. Perhaps turning that data into information. So perhaps you are a node. A beautiful node. Because why not be beautiful? And so you may try to make your words beautiful. Easy to digest. Delicious words that leave the reader satisfied and enriched.
So, how do you do any of this? I really don’t know. I mentioned in the last post that I suspect I’m merely a puppet on strings. And someone else is doing it. So I try to get out of the way and let them write. Not try to break free from the strings. I’ve tried that and nothing good came out. It was just words. No beauty. No connection. But I enjoy the words when I feel like I didn’t write them.
So you try to find that state. Or allow that state to emerge. And you find your own way. And you remember and you forget until you become that state. And all that is inside you may become more than just words.
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