Thoughts of Writing

Everyone's had that day when you've sat down with a blank page in front of you, a pencil or pen in your hand, a million thoughts going in a million different directions, and you just can't seem to grasp one well enough to put it into words. Personally, that kind of thing happens to me often and it drives me crazy because when I do finally harness the ability to write? It's all over the place - just like my thought process. Take writing a letter to my laddy love, for instance. While I'm writing it, it's great, I have great things to say and I know just how I want to say it and what I want to say next. It's a fantastic feeling, never running out of things to say about him or to him, but thank whatever gods may be that I go back and I re-read my letters to him or I would be sending him a jumbled mess.

I was reading a book that Stephen King wrote on how to be a writer, why he's a writer, for my honors composition course this semester and something he said stuck with me. Now, he had gotten the advice from someone else, and I don't have it perfect, but it stuck with me. It's easy to write a lot of words but it's harder to write only the words you need. You can add and add and add all day long but in the end, you lose the message, you lose what you spent all that effort in trying to tell someone. If you can say it in a sentence, do it - it doesn't always have to be the length of a novel. I mean, if you're on a date with a woman at night and you're sitting on a bench, gazing up at the moon, are you going to give a drawn out version of why you think the moon is beautiful and why your date is beautiful? Come on, you're going to get right to it: 'The moonlight adds a very alluring mystical glow about you,' or some such nonsense.

I guess that's what I'm having trouble with the most. I've been writing a letter to him for days, nay, nearly a week now. I know it won't be my last letter, by any means, but this one - this one is important. The first letter, I mailed it to him while I was at orientation. Sure, he didn't get it until I was already back home, but I actually spent the entire ride to Johnson City writing that fabulous man of mine a letter with the intent of sending it to him when I got there - and I did. The second letter, I wrote before I was going to seem him one weekend about a month ago and I left it where he would find it. Just to make sure he would find it, I called him later and wished him a good night over the phone, then told him where to find it. Not very coy of me but I honestly don't care about games. This one - this one I want to hand to him and watch him read it. Silly, but true.

So here I am, with a notebook left over from high school, filling up pages and pages with what we've talked about, thinks I've wanted to tell him but I get my tongue too twisted to say, questions I bumbled in asking and want to clarify - and I'm look at this going, 'Why would I subject anyone to read all of this? Why not just keep it clean and simple?' I mean, he isn't going to sit down with four or five sheets of notebook paper in his hand and read it - I wouldn't expect him to. It's like trying to keep a guys attention while explain why you chose contact lenses over glasses - I mean, he loves the fact he can see your eyes, but honestly? He really doesn't care. So why bother?

Why bother? Why bother writing him a letter when I've written him twice before, when I tell him every time I see him that I love him, when I talk to him every night and I see him every weekend? Because I wake up every day and it's like falling in love all over again. I never cease to find things to love about him, I'm never bored with him, I'm never looking at my watch and going 'Ye gods, when will this end?' On the contrary, I'm wishing for more time with him because he makes me feel like no one else has ever made me feel. He makes he feel beautiful and makes me believe that I'm beautiful. I am happiest when I'm with him and I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with that man.

So why can't I just sit down and write a letter starting off with something like that?

Because I think I just did.