To Write

Today, I want to talk about the sheer joy of writing.

I invite you to share it with me.


* * * * * *

For me as a writer, there are three orgasmic moments.

The first comes when an idea shows up with it’s own voice.

My brain tends to race a bit, and most of the time its sort of stream of consciousness, random thoughts and ideas that flash like little lightning bolts in my head. They are usually mushy and voiceless, and I can’t actually hear them for the first time until I’m in the middle of talking and they hitchhike a ride on a sentence to the outside world. Sometimes those are cool, and I think to myself … “Hmm, that was interesting.”

But favorite moment number one of three has to do with the ones that show up on-scene fully formed, kicking and screaming.

They’ve already come equipped with a metaphor or analogy, and they’re wearing it like a winter jacket, or a bikini, depending completely on what their passion is. They require nothing from me but an acknowledgement that I am capable of properly expressing them.

They are sort of like children, in the Gibran sense of the word. They are clearly not “mine.” They come through me, and the universe rewards me with the gift of opportunity to express them. I remember the day I first realized how unusual it was that I don’t agree with about half of my OWN thoughts. I’m just lucky enough to be their conduit.

Developed thoughts don’t ask me to believe them. But they do communicate with me. They are inquisitive and each has only one question.

“Stew, are you capable of expressing me?”

It is literally a moment of bliss to hear that question boom inside my head, and be able to answer “yes.”

Then comes the hardest, yet most rewarding part of the process. The writing.

I’ve conversed with linguists and translators who describe the process of hearing a sentence in one language and mentally processing it to articulate it in another.

That’s what I think it feels like to try to write one of these ideas down.

Because many aren’t words. Sometimes they are feelings, or notions, or emotions, or “sense-i-tive,” in that they are actually smells, or sounds, or sights. And the singular joy of the writing part is finding the precisely correct combination of words in the right order to transfer the thought from its birth form, into written words on a page.

It’s a process that has been modernized to be ---

Typetypetype space typetypetype. Dictionary page-whirling. Deletedelete type space type type type space. Thesaurus smell. Typetype type space typetypetype. Highlight, delete.

But at the end, there is a physical feeling of satisfaction when the last word or phrase falls into place.

It simulates walking up to a locked door in the dark with a set of keys, having to pee. You know that one of them fits, but you ALSO know that you’ve been as bad as good, and karma won’t let it be the first one. And it isn’t. And you’re twisting back and forth, and squeezing to make the pee wait, and crossing your legs, and jangling keys and feeling for the keyhole with your thumb and sliding the key you’ve picked down your thumb to the keyhole, and realizing that “nope, that’s not it.” And starting over, and getting frustrated, and starting to wrongly focus on having to pee as your primary problem rather than having to find the right key because whether you pee on yourself or not, you’re still going to have to open the door. And feeling the next key not even fit in the hole at all and realizing that you haven’t kept track of which key you started with so there’s a chance of wasting a try with the same key twice. Now you’re cursing under your breath even though you’re a Sunday school teacher and wondering if God forgives people who have to pee but the goddamn lock won’t open for taking his name in vain. And starting to think you’re not going to make it and thinking back to the last time you’ve peed on yourself and wondering how many adults pee on themselves a mere 20 feet from a toilet and starting to panic and dropping the keys, and picking them up knowing that now you’ve really lost your place and now you juST NEED TO OPEN THE DOOR BECAUSE THIS SHIT AIN’T FUNNY ANYMORE AND YOU’RE A GROWN-UP AND SHOULD BE ABLE TO HAVE ENOUGH SELF CONTROL TO MAKE IT TO THE FUCKING BATHROOM AND GRABBING THE ENTIRE DOORKNOB AND JUST RAMMING THE FIRST KEY YOUR FINGERS CAN FEEL INTO THE KEYHOLE AND FEELING IT SLIDE IN AND VIOLENTLY TWISTING IT TO THE RIGHT AND THEN THE LEFT AND HEARING IT ...

... CLICK!

Now freeze.

That’s what the moment I’m trying to tell you about feels like.

That instant the door is unlocked. Suddenly, you don’t even have to pee as bad because you opened the door.

In writing, it is orgasmic because you’ve replicated the voice of the idea in your head.

And you are happy.

And the thought is happy, even if it’s a sad thought, because part of it was worried that it couldn’t be shared with the universe because it’d come through such an unworthy vessel.

Can you imagine how fortunate a thought must be to arrive at the mind of a Dante, or a Mark Twain, or a Stephen King, or a Caleb Carr?

How unlucky it is to enter the world and be forced to make its presence known through the limited voice of the inarticulate.

How halting a journey that must be.

It’s probably as unlucky for that thought that wants to be written to arrive in THAT space, as it is for a thought that needs to be drawn or painted to show up in MY brain. Even if it is the Mona Lisa …

She’s doomed! She’ll be lucky to become a stick-man with eyes. Or an emoticon : --)

Getting it right is the second moment.

The third moment happens when you share that written idea, in your own words, in front of someone and watch them “get it.”

You see your idea not “moved” … because it’s still with you.

But it is multiplied because now it lives in two people’s minds.

Then three, then four, then 50, then 100, then 1000, 1,000,000,000

Then everybody knows it. It’s a best-selling idea! It’s … a SUCCESS.

Well, I have no notion of how many people have to get it for that to happen, but I’ve seen the converted; the people who didn’t understand what I was trying to say, until they read it in written words. It completes me as a writer. It’s the conclusion of the trinity.

And they feel me.

Yes?