A Feast of Granola Bars

December 25, 2007

Whatever I commit to writing in this blog is something that I've thought about for some time already. True, I write spontaneously; I don't plan whatever comes out of the keyboard. All I do is hold one thought, a nameless and amorphous thought that has been floating around in my head, and I try to make it solid, to bring it into material existence using words. There are a lot of tumbling, bodiless thoughts in my mind. The purpose of this blog is to give them life.

 

However, I don't see myself as a good writer. I can admit that I write better than average in the sense that I know how to manipulate words, how to make them say exactly what I want said. But writing isn't all about words. In fact, writing has little to do with words the way painting has little to do with paint. You can use crayolas, color pencils, oil paints, water colors, but the medium is only a medium without an idea or a thought to direct its impression on the canvas. You can use interesting idioms, intelligent figures of speech, artfully placed commas, strategically placed periods—but they are only words, and without an idea or a thought to direct them on paper or on a screen, they will remain only words forever—disembodied and meaningless

 
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