See, writing is not about just putting letters to paper (or digital media). It isn’t just putting words together to make beautiful sentences. If it was, they could make a study of what kind of sentence looked most pretty and make a book full of it. Job done.
Writing is about conveying. It is about building. It is about breaking down.
When you write, you write from somewhere. It requires you to have a level of awareness.
You must be aware of words. You must be aware of the meaning of words. You even must be aware of the fact that the speaking of a word is different from writing it. A spoken word has intonation, direction, facial expression (unless on the phone), and much more. A written word doesn’t have this.
This is why, when I was younger, I tended to add so many parts to a sentence, it wouldn’t make sense any more. It was all to make sure the context was clear. The risk in it was that with so much additions you yourself would trail off while writing. I did on many occasions.
We write from our minds. Without our minds, we can’t write. It is an intrinsic part of cognition. We can write only what we can think of. We can write words as a reference to an idea or concept, or write a word that is a precise description. These differences are small when you look closely, but very big when you take a step back.
An example:
When I write about rain, your mind can flutter along many different images or words, or even songs. You can think of distant rain. Standing in the rain. Singing in the rain. What rain is made off. When last you saw rain, or the last person you shared rain with. So many things that reference from that one word rain.
When I write about my index finger, which has an unclipped nail, where there is short hairs on the back of it. Callus on the connection to the second phalanx due to practicing kungfu. I give you a description that gives you insight. It doesn’t give you much options for music, other people but me (though that is all up to you as reader of course). It is more likely that you are trying to build an non-existing image of my finger. This is a totally different aspect of our cognition.
As you write, you can be aware of these effects. Whether you want to write to trigger the reader’s memory, or build an image of a new world, is up to you. Just be aware that when the brain is doing one thing, it doesn’t like being switching between the two too much (most often).
Be aware, write!
