What Makes Your Writing Fly?

September 8, 2009 · by Joanna Paterson · in

By words the mind is winged ~ Aristophanes

What gets you flying when you feel you want to write?

That’s the question Ken Allan, the blogger in middle-earth is asking on behalf of the Green Pen Society*.

Here’s what he says:

Some write to pass on their thoughts to their descendants; some writers record their daily activities; others just write for the hell of it.

The theme for this month is about the passion that makes you write.

What brings you to write the things you choose to write about? Go on! Sock it to us! What gets you flying when you feel you want to write?

I thought it was a great question, one I both wanted to share, and try and answer myself.

I decided to restrict my own answer to blogging – because it was what immediately sprung to mind, although I do know that my answer in relation to other kinds of more personal writing that I do would be a little different.

Here’s what happened when I asked and answered the question:

What Makes My Blog Writing Fly?

What gets me flying when I feel I want to write? he asks.

Well, I think, as the question bubbles through my mind, as words and images form, as answers ask to be written, as possibilities unfold.

Well, I think, it’s something to do with…

It’s something to do with the belief I hold that our words count.   That our words can make a difference.

It’s something to do with the feeling, the belief, the hope I hold that my words can make a difference, can reach out, connect, open up possibilities, convey confidence, tease with possibility, awaken the desire to share just a bit more, reinforce the belief that your voice matters and your words count.

It’s something to do with what happens when we blog: the conversations that begin, and continue, and take us in wild and unexpected places; it’s the connections we feel, notice, wonder at, forge; it’s the feedback and response I get when someone says your words made a difference, made me stretch, try, experiment, laugh, dismiss that inner critic.

It’s something do with connection, I think to myself.

"Only Connect" ~ E M Forster, Jupiter Artland stonework, photo by Joanna Young

But it’s more, my mind whispers.

It’s the feeling you get, that’s why you write, she reminds me. It’s the chance blogging gives you to:

Learn, to exchange ideas, to write with spirit, to learn what moves you, moves your words, moves others.

It’s learning how the words come to connect, what makes the spark fly, what makes them resonant.

It’s learning how writing sometimes seems to flow, how words bubble up, how they flow up and back down to the ground beneath your feet, it’s learning how writing makes things possible and how words can make your mind feel more expansive and alive.

No, it’s more than that, it’s the feeling.

It’s like diving into a pool, and emerging refreshed, alive, and optimistic.

Heck, why not say what you mean?

It’s like swimming in the source.

And with a feeling like that, who wouldn’t want to write?

~~~

Thank you Ken for a question that got my words flying :-)

If you want to share your own answer, comment or link back to Ken’s initial post: The Mind Is Winged by Words

* The Green Pen Society is a group of writers/bloggers who are developing their voice in writing about the world around them.

The ‘only connect’ quote runs on like this:

“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer” ~ E.M. Forster