A Short Ramble on Writing

My mind sometimes is a boiling cauldron of unbidden thoughts. I write because I have to. If I don't pen my thoughts I will never have peace of mind. The words haunt me, and scream to be put in ink on paper. It matters not if they are read by anyone. Take this as an example. I wrote this four years ago and it has sat in my computer since.

Writing exorcises the demons that threaten to drive me mad. My head will explode if the words and thoughts aren't bled away occasionally in blue or black ink, which is the mind's blood, and the pus of the distended boil of a writer's brain. To write is to relieve the pressures within of a mind too active for its own good. Writing is the penicillin for a fevered mind.

I understand why a lot of writer's indulge in excessive drinking and drug usage. The words need to be silenced at times by the sweet blankness of the alcoholic blackout, the fantastic dreams, of nothing and everything, of the hallucinogen, the banishment of coherent thought in the opiate haze, all of which lead to the empty dreamless sleep of the passed out and unconscious state.

Writers are not artists as others claim, not in the true sense of art.

They are possessed of brains that contain too many thoughts, too many words, too much imagination, all this screaming for release from the tortured souls so possessed. It's not a boon, nor is it a blessing. It is a curse, which drives many mad, or into a life of drink and drugs for the succor of a thought and word free mind, and the simple dreams of a wordless baby.

One can never truly write the words which flood his or her brain. It's maddening, and impossible I feel. The words flit by too fast, and what appears on the page is always but a pale short-hand imitation of the words that ran through your mind. It's rarely even close to what you thought it would be. It’s like the scribblings of a four year old trying to transcribe Shakespeare being spoken aloud in the air around the child. The voice in your brain speaks the words too quickly, and you remember but bits and pieces of what it spoke to you. Only fragments are written of the epics displayed in your mind's eye, and heard by your mind's ear. It is all very frustrating at times, and no wonder it could possibly drive a person to drink.

Every story written is really a failure, some more so than others. You can never truly capture the full essence and dialogue you find in your head. The words are like a waterfall falling through a sieve, your brain, which you try to catch in a thimble (your writing skills). So much is lost, so little retained, and it never tastes as sweet as the waters you savored directly from the waterfall. It's enough to drive you insane.

Oh, but that there would come some clever inventive fellow some day, to build a machine to capture all those thoughts and words! What then the wonderful stories that could be told! Until this creative genius comes along and invents his machine a writer can only strive to be mediocre; to tell the tale to the best of his or her meager skill. Only the very best can capture that which is within their skulls, hearts, and souls, and bring it to the light of the written word complete as the writer envisioned it. Those that can do this are the geniuses, the true artisans of the word, showing the world the mirror which is the written language.

I wish that person, that scientist, inventor and tinkerer, would one day soon invent the skullcap mind-reading machine. It would save quite a few livers of some struggling frustrated writers. Either that, or a room full of talented secretaries to transcribe every word, every thought.

How do you other writers here feel? I’d love to hear what others here think and to read your comments on your thoughts about writing.