For today’s blog, I’m resurrecting something from my archives that I wrote 10 years ago.
Ten YEARS ago.
Wow.
That was back when I first started blogging, and before I took a several years’ hiatus from it. But I found this little tidbit in my old posts, and I thought it might be interesting to revisit. This isn’t one of my more “instructional” posts… it’s more of a philosophical one about what writers do. Or maybe what they are.
So here you go, my original post from 10 years ago… (It’s short.)
Word Cities
Writers have a unique and important challenge.
They must take the materials they have available – ideas, experience, language – and assemble them into something altogether different. More than that, they must not merely assemble them, but craft them, so that the pieces fit together into a finished building that invites others not only to admire it from a distance, but to enter it and become enclosed by it. The trouble is determining which bricks are worth making a building out of, and which should be thrown into the rubbish pile.
As writers, we must be able to set aside the fear and innumerable distractions which get in our way – the stumbling blocks, to put it tritely – and locate those blocks which are best suited for building a firm and appealing foundation. We must be able to craft experience into buildings, ideas into towers, and through the streets of language connect them all into a spectacular city which invites the reader to both enter and explore.
So, this was my thought all those years ago:
As writers, we are architects, building word cities. It is our job to build something that readers want to enter.
What are your thoughts? Do you agree? Do you have anything to add?