Launched on Language

I was walking my dog at dusk along our familiar path by the river when a porcupine waddled into view, a great gleaming surprise of flesh and quills. He filled the path, blocking our way, and forced us to turn across the rough, to scrape through unfamiliar territory of Russian olive and willow herb. When I write, something just as unexpected often rises on the page, demanding notice. It may be an unexpected character, slouching in the plot line. It may be that a character acts in an unexpected way. In either case, I am forced to explore unfamiliar territory, and in those moments, writers are open to wonder.

The act of writing is transformational. Putting words on paper, building that story, essay or poem changes the writer. As our thoughts take shape on the page, we begin to see our lives, and others lives, in a fresh way. Just as our characters sometimes surprise us as we invent them on the page, our reflections lead us in unexpected directions. Poet and essayist Thomas Lynch describes the process this way, “Every poem is an adventure. Every essay is an adventure in the same way. There is a sense that you’re launching yourself on the language and seeing how long it will keep you afloat.”