war of words

Like most epic tales, it begins in the night, when the world is settling into the darkness and I am fast approaching exhaustion. This is the time when my thoughts are free, when I can translate feelings more easily into words, and when the very air surrounding me feels easier to breathe. This is when I nestle into some nook or another and prepare to tackle the daunting task of writing. I never know how long this process will take. I can’t be sure of where I will go or what I will find. But of one thing, I can always certain: the journey of words ahead of me will be fraught with a series of internal battles. Some will be resolved within a matter of seconds, others minutes, but some of these battles will cause discomfort of the acutest kind as I agonize over every minute detail of the words before me. Writing is a war—a beautiful, cathartic, freeing war—but a war nonetheless.

Moments after the war has commenced, my first battle begins. I hear the nagging voices of English teachers past urging me to pre-write and to plan. I resist. No idea of mine is ever conceived from pre-writing in the traditional manner. I battle briefly with the voices ringing in my mind before deciding to follow the path that gets my ideas flowing and puts word on the page.  I contemplate, I reflect, I muse. Then I write. Even if I haven’t found Inspiration, I write, growing more and more desperate to force some thoughts onto the page as the dark belly of night engulfs me. These thoughts are choppy, jumbled, and out of order. Some are downright incoherent at this point; many will be tweaked or removed completely come morning when I approach them with a (semi-) conscious mind. Organization and flow are the furthest things from my mind. The majority of sentences I begin are violently backspaced before they reach more than four or five words in length. Words are interchanged time and time again, many of them disappearing completely from the page. I scroll back and forth to different sections of text, bolding passages that are giving me grief as a reminder to alter them later. Through all of this doctoring and rearranging, I become painfully aware of the idiosyncratic tendencies that mar my writing: my affinity for long, rambling sentences; the oftentimes absurd frequency at which dashes, hyphens, and semi-colons appear; my unwillingness to delete a sentence that contains a pet phrase, word, or idea of mine, even though it doesn’t quite fit.

After staring at the computer screen into the wee hours of the morning, my eyes glazed over from my feeble attempts to wrangle the English language into a deeply insightful sample of writing that is sure to boggle the minds of intellectuals and plebeians alike, I crawl into my bed.  My exhaustion has overtaken me and a burdensome block on my creativity has settled in. Inevitably though, just as my dear and often neglected friend, Sleep, is on the horizon, so close that I can almost shake his hand, the precise phrase I’d been searching for pops into my head. At this point, I remain lethargic and motionless, as I experience another battle, one I’m sure can have no true winner. In one corner stands Sleep, so warm and inviting, his lazy yawn drawing one out of my own mouth. Opposite him is Inspiration, so elusive that he seems a mirage; I’m never quite convinced of his reality. They fight valiantly, but the match soon concludes, Inspiration just barely securing a win. I sit up, shaking my head disapprovingly at his ill-fated timing, snatch the nearest scrap of paper—a grocery receipt, last week’s German assignment, a parade of Post-It Notes—and scribble until I have no words left in me, all the while hoping that I’ll be able to decipher my hieroglyphs in the morning.  

Somewhere in the midst of my unconventional writing session, another battle commences. I will begin a sentence that is not prescriptively correct and proceed to agonize over whether I should “fix” it or let it remain in all its colloquial glory.

 Nobody really talks like that, the Descriptive Devil perched on my shoulder argues, you’ll come across as a pretentious know-it-all with an abnormally severe superiority complex if you follow the rules.  (Now, descriptivism plays the role of the devil in this battle not because I believe it to be evil, but because it encourages me to deviate from what is “right” and “proper” and also because I do love a good alliteration.)

But, counters the Prescriptive Angel, it’s supposed to be written that way. Following the rules isn’t a bad thing; it often helps to clarify meaning and intent and sounds more intelligent.

           
 This battle doesn’t have a consistent winner; in some instances, I throw the rule book out the window. On other occasions, though, I adhere strictly to its guidelines, perhaps feeling that correctness will compensate for my shortcomings as a writer or satisfy my intrinsic compulsion to control and to perfect. It’s a battle that leaves me feeling torn, hoping that someday I will be able to mediate more effectively between the two camps of grammar.

           
 I can stay up late purging ideas, I can find it in myself to reject the notions of “correct” prewriting lingering in my brain from years of pubic school, I can reach some sort of temporary truce between “right” and “wrong” grammar, but there will always be one last battle that is imperative for me to fight. A concluding battle.

It’s not finished yet, I realize. I must write a conclusion to seal it closed and signify that I’m ready to relinquish all power and control I have over my writing and offer it with shaking hands to the public domain. It doesn’t have to be long or complex. But I must write it.

One last sentence. One last period. And then the end.