Why Writing Matters

Sometimes, when I was younger, people at parties would ask me, "Why are you so quiet?" Usually they would ask this ask this in a very loud voice, as if quietness somehow disturbed or annoyed them. There must be something wrong with you, their query seemed to suggest, if you were not as loud as they were.

Of course, I watned to respond, "Why are you so loud?" And I still believe that it's wiser, to paraphrase Mark Twain, to be suspected to be a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt. People who talk very little often, when they do talk, have something worthwhile to say.

I'm not suggesting I'm all that wise. What I do know is that writing in particular has given me a voice, given me the opportunity to speak out and be heard in the noisy crowd of the ongoing party we call the human race. As the youngest in my family for many years, I was often given the opportunity to speak up much. I turned inward and became known for being "imaginative" and "able to entertain myself." Back then, I focused my imagination on created towns of little wooden people and Matchbox cars. Now, or at least when I'm "in the zone," I find that outlet in writing.

The voice is real, especially if one chooses to seek publication, which is probably not as hard as it's made out to be. Many people write, but how many actually take the chance of sending material out to be read and rejected? Taking that chance just might get you somewhere, and you also might learn something. Whereas I made have had a hard time being heard in my own family, and later in my own house, I was able to be heard (or read) by thousands when I published my first piece in the newspaper.

It's a mysterious thing to be read by hundreds or thousands of people you've never met. It's also an important part of the writing process, in that it completes the circle of communication. True, you can write poems and stories for yourself and find this very rewarding. But writing is meant to be read, and what the reader brings to the equation is equally mysterious. In some ways, the writer never really experiences what he has written, because he is not the true reader. The reader completes the artistic process, and adds his or her own perceptions, biases, and imagination. This is what makes writing so different from, say, filmmaking or visual art. The writer or poet works with words, but he also works with the abstractions and ideas these words represent.

Writing gives voice to those thoughts and ideas. Writing gives voice to the quiet.