I think about this writing thing that we do. I have been writing almost all of my life. Doesn’t everybody?
I came to writing by the way of childhood, innocent and truthful. I was sitting at our kitchen table after supper doing a third-grade Language-Arts homework assignment. It was after supper; mom was clearing the table. The story I was writing was about a dog, “Noodles,” who was supposed to eat a particular brand of dog food for a magazine picture. The only problem was Noodles hated the food and wouldn’t eat it. Long story short, the photographer had to bring in the competitor’s dog food before they could take the picture for the magazine.
As mom moved back and forth from table to sink, she asked me how my story was coming along. I told her with each pass of the trouble Noodle was causing in the photo studio.
“Where do you get the words for that story?” Mom asked as she came by to wipe up the remaining crumbs around my notebook.
“Oh, I don’t have the words,” I explained very matter-of-fact, “They are all right here.” I tapped the tip of the pencil. “I just put my pencil on the paper, and they come out on their own.”
It was as natural for me as breathing.
I have been writing since Noodles refused the dog food but I didn’t know it inside me until now that our words are the expression of our souls, of our lives, of our hearts, of our intellect, and of our memories and desires. By writing about our lives, we invite others in to feel us, to know us, to love us and perhaps sometimes hate us, but as writers we can do little else but write.
Leave a Reply