Writing is weird.

[HiroXV]

Not to say that it is bad, it is not. I'm not insulting writing, because I definitely benefit a lot from it.

If it weren't for writing, I think, I don't know where I would be with my life, to be honest, maybe I wouldn't be anywhere.

I read something funny a while ago, which was like, “reading is weird, you hallucinate images in your head while reading ink placed on worked wood.”, I laughed at that, but then I thought, it would be nice to see life that way, whereupon I thought, actually yes, writing is really weird too.

I don't know what is the weirdest part of writing, there would be so much to list. I think, and I think it's actually something shared by everyone, that no matter how much you try to detach yourself in your writing from reality, you always reflect it in some way: a person's thinking, his way of being, is reflected in the words he writes despite trying to detach himself as much as possible and form a character completely distinct from his personality or neutral to it.

That's why I say that writing is weird, but not only writing, the act of inventing characters is strange, making them talk to each other, because as I said we ourselves are those characters: it's as if facets of us are talking to each other.

I often talk alone, in the sense, I have real conversations, people tell me it's strange, and consequently I do it in solitude. But what's the difference in a book? Does giving these conversations a context in a story make them less strange?

The point is: writing dialogues, communicating, in a book is at the same weight as talking alone, that's why writing is weird, it's just a glorified version of that, approximately.

Well... Have a good day, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Get a cookie!

 

[LilRora]

Ah yes, writing, the middle point between real conversation and talking to the voices in your head.

I think people who write stories are mostly people with great imagination. They may be a bit talking to themselves kind of quirky, but they don't have to; all of them, however, need the ability to think hypothetically, which has been shown to correlate with intelligence.

On another note, I always get annoyed when people dismiss fiction as irrelevant to various things. The writing always reflects its author and the reality they see. It doesn't matter how detached the fiction is from reality, it is always shown through the lens of the writer, through a real medium, which makes it a reflection of everything that has shaped the person.

Why these are particularly related is that human brain is the place where every experience is distilled into writing. For people that have great imagination and can think hypothetically, they can theoretically see events for what they are down to the ideas and concepts behind them and rearrange them in a different coat. Those that cannot do that will be restricted by their experiences and they will struggle to produce anything original or unusual.

In reality, however, no human is perfect. Most writers are a mix of those two, so they are able to glean behind what they see, but they cannot escape their ingrained preconceptions and bias as well as limits of creativity, which make it difficult for them to truly write freely and express their ideas in a completely pure form.

 

[l8rose]

Writing is weird but so is reading.

You see a few words and can hallucinate an entire world.

 

[fcures]

Everything is weird if you think about it. You look at small, colorful lights, and when they change, we change our expressions. Therefore, everything is normal.

 

[aToTeT]

Perhaps writing should be insulted, though?

Derided, disparaged, and subject to every single expression of societal disgust!

Is not writing but playing pretend with dress up dollies? Elevated only for their having been wreathed in words for an audience’s discernment; the performative particulars of one’s person laid bare, but for their garish trappings of faux refinement, sent to prance about proudly in the public square like the Emperor in his Fine Threadings?

But does the author wear their writing… or does what they write wear them?

I have been experimenting with different styles of late. Brevity aligned with poignancy, the passionate and tangential sharing a bed, an absurd simplicity, and the ‘I’m just having fun here’ type…

Everywhere: I have found rhetoric.

No matter the voice I affect upon myself, no matter the devices of language I use, no matter how utterly divorced and unthinkable a character’s actions are for myself and from myself:

From how I present a hypothetical person’s actions, to where I focus a given scene, and the very choice of what story secrets I keep close to my chest:

They are indelibly stained with me, and are invariably used to convey meaning — to impart my being into a parseable medium, and to inject that self-slurry into other (often unsuspecting) people.

And that’s what makes it beautiful, and wonderful, and such a joy to write:

And that's what makes reading such a wonder, and a beauty, and so joyful a thing:

Stories are made of people!

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I read something funny a while ago, which was like, “reading is weird, you hallucinate images in your head while reading ink placed on worked wood.”, I laughed at that, but then I thought, it would be nice to see life that way, whereupon I thought, actually yes, writing is really weird too.

Writing is creating a shared hallucination (unless the "theory" that writers are actually psychics who view other worlds and try to chronicle the events they witness there is true - then it is even weirder...) to direct others into. Very, very weird, yes.

 

[ZiriiNora]

it is weird

 

[Corty]

I am weird.


And my readers either love it or hate it. No in-between.

 

[gaylolis]

when you write enough it probably becomes pretty normal

 

[Paul__Michaels]

I just see it as an outlet to spew my delicious of grandeur....

What? It's healthy!

 

[HiroXV]

Everything is weird if you think about it. You look at small, colorful lights, and when they change, we change our expressions. Therefore, everything is normal.

Yes, I agree. If we see it from this point of view, I didn't think about applying it to every means of life.
Maybe you're right, everything is weird but that weirdness doesn't make it special or anything, it makes it normal. Which makes me think: does something being normal, make it special? We live in a world where "normality" isn't really defined, every one of us is quirky in a way, we find differences everywhere. So maybe, whatever normal there is out there, that is the truly special thing in the world?

But does the author wear their writing… or does what they write wear them?

What they write wears them. We know authors not because of their personal life or achievements but because of their works. In literature studies, the life of an author is often used to accompany their works, the spotlight goes to what someone creates and not the creator. This is to say, I do think that an author is their creation and not vice versa.

 

[CheertheSecond]

Writing is one of the mediums where humans express their divinity. It is the way through which they exercise their godhood as worlds-makers, as creators.

It will always carry some parts of their beings. This is one of the ways that preserves one's being for eternity.

 

[Nolff]

Big summary: Everything is weird.

My summary: You're weird. Yes, the OP is weird.

 

[HiroXV]

My summary: You're weird. Yes, the OP is weird.

Yes, I agree, this OP guy sure as hell is a weirdo.

 

[Nolff]

Yes, I agree, this OP guy sure as hell is a weirdo.

Sarcasm at its finest.

 

[Lysander_Works]

I see it as a grand experimental way to express any aspect of the mind, experimental because, you can do what you want with it, and people with either feel one way about it or another, usually.

 

[wresch]

Writing is just telling a story. We all do that. What I did yesterday. What I plan for tomorrow. What is "weird" is that our stories are so long. Think about it. When is the last time you had a conversation that didn't get interrupted in less than two minutes. We rush. We jump from topic to topic. Someone wants to add to your story by telling their own. Conversations are crowded.

Novels let us tell longer stories. Stories we get to tell without competition. Stories we get to change as we prepare them. Stories that grow as our unlimited time lets us rethink and revision. Stories much more like the stories old ones might have told over a fire in years past. Nothing weird about that. Something very satisfying about that.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

But is Weirding Right?

 

[HiroXV]

But is Weirding Right?

If weirding is right, is righting weird?

 

[aToTeT]

Think about it. When is the last time you had a conversation that didn't get interrupted in less than two minutes. We rush. We jump from topic to topic. Someone wants to add to your story by telling their own. Conversations are crowded.

Novels let us tell longer stories. Stories we get to tell without competition. Stories we get to change as we prepare them. Stories that grow as our unlimited time lets us rethink and revision. Stories much more like the stories old ones might have told over a fire in years past. Nothing weird about that. Something very satisfying about that.

When I manage to go uninterrupted in telling a story for two minutes in real life: it’s usually because I’m (unintentionally) holding the other person hostage to social norms that say, “You can’t tell someone to shut their trap and go away.”

Yet in writing, I can chain together 3600 words in a monologue, and people might even express their joy for my having stolen entire minutes of their life away.

I expect the thing at play here is expectations. If I grab cereal from out of the cupboard (or more likely the countertop), pour that into a bowl I fetched from the dishwasher (or more likely the countertop), pour moulding milk from the countertop into said stale cereal-filled dirty bowl, nab a plastic spoon and pop a spoonful of that slop into my mouth:

Yes, I expect it to be kinda awful, but I can probably chow down through a few bites until the taste really hits me.

Whereas if someone comes over and shoves my favourite candy in my mouth: I’m spitting that out immediately.

People go to poetry recitals, and theatrical opera, and the movies to sit down with their friends and hear a story be told.

Novels are just a lonelier form of being told a story, which you can put down the moment it gives you a bad taste, with none of the social niceties to hold you prisoner.

What they write wears them. We know authors not because of their personal life or achievements but because of their works. In literature studies, the life of an author is often used to accompany their works, the spotlight goes to what someone creates and not the creator. This is to say, I do think that an author is their creation and not vice versa.

This Author is a fiction sold — a Voice enslaved to diction’s tone.

For rules there are to stories wrote — four Edicts carved upon my crown:

Success depends on syntax norms — a cadence heard but never drawn.

Speak plain to them and toil for Gold —
“Entertain us, Enlightened One:

We must be moved by what you’ve said — don’t break the trust, your spell, our hook!”

If truth shines on my lying words — then it’s too late: this Author’s cooked!

Well there’s an hour down the drain, when I could be sleeping. It was fun though. Inspiring thought.