Words with Friends

Sometimes I ask myself, "Why do I like writing, where did I first get bitten with my love of words?" I admit, the difference between reading and writing can occasionally feel like the change between an enchanting, ambling walk and a pushed-forward run.  (Though some reading does turn quite uphill, and the views are not always rewarding!)

Yet writing allows me to play with words, to weigh them and explore their interwoven complexities. I can taste them differently, feeling the smooth roundness of a certain word here, or nipping at the zesty sprinkling of this pair of phrases there. Writing is a place for discourse where I can acquaint myself with friends introduced through another writer's pen. Reading is where I congregate and glean my thought-mates. As I write, I can call them back, encountering them again in new circumstances. Sometimes I discover that the humor of this one now irks me, or that simple gem I once enjoyed is delightfully multifaceted. And perhaps when I return again to the same spot where I was first introduced to these new comrades, I will know something that our mutual friend, that author, does not know. And that is because the words and I now have our own connections and experiences, quite apart from that original encounter. Through these new words, I have seen unfamiliar angles I did not know before, and likewise, they perhaps have seen new light through me.

Now, I don't claim to be wholly impartial. There are word-friends whose company I enjoy more than others. Is this the limit of my writer's voice? Perhaps not, but it is, I think, the barometer of it. "Show me your friends, and I'll show you your future" the saying goes. I can arrange, encounter, and have my effect on them in various ways, but they can affect me as well. I change too. My penned friends can guide who I will become. These inklings introduce me to new ideas, reshaping my thoughts. And from my thoughts come attitudes, emotions, action. I will become what I think, so I'd best not leave the front door to my mind constantly open and unchecked. Choosing whom to entertain and when is necessary if I want to avoid a vandalized interior.


So where am I meeting these word friends? Who do I look to in steering my acquaintanceship? Those corridors upon pages, those mingling phrases that gab and dance to the rhythm of the bars of black and white, these are the places I go to meet my thought-mates and make my book-dates. Where I "go" is important. Formative even. Both for myself, and the body of work that these colloquies will create in company.

Now, I'd better put down my figurative pen and bid you adieu. I've got a humorous little text I've arranged a tête-à-tête with. So, picking up those lit bits where I will, I can have the fun of asking "shall we dance?"