What This Is

So here I am, a wannabe writer, starting a blog. Here I am, 6:31 in the morning, staring at a computer screen, clueless about blogging, nary an idea about what I'll write, even a little uncertain why I'm writing it. So I'll start with what I love, and what I know.

I love words. I love the way they feel in your mouth, the way they ring in your ears and echo through your mind. The way they travel continents and centuries to speak to you, dance a jig before your eyes, and fade away again in the space of a minute. The way they appear painstakingly on a computer screen, letter by letter, forming, dissipating, and forming again, searching for the perfect combination. I love words for themselves, but I love them even more for their purpose. Language exists for one reason: to communicate. To connect with another human being and share something of yourself. From the moment I learned how to talk I have had an overwhelming need to communicate as much as possible to the people around me. This has sometimes (often) gone a bit too far, in the sense of annoying the hell out of people, notably my mother. But, annoying or not, the urge to share has been a guiding force in my life.

The other thing I love is stories. All types. Anything with vivid characters and a world that's not here. I doubt I have to explain this. Anyone who's ever picked up a book, flipped on the television or (gasp) actually left the house to see a movie knows the freedom of escaping your reality for a while. I'm reasonably sure it's a universal urge. And I have that one in spades as well.

[Side note: I just realized how weird that expression is. I assume it refers to cards? Aren't there just as many spades as, say, hearts? Okay, I just looked it up and it has something to do with spades being the highest ranking suit in bridge. Also, it's possible the word spade is somehow racist. Huh. Aren't words fascinating?]

So that's what I love. Here's what I know: I want to write. Nothing would make me happier than tricking someone into paying me for this. (Well, it's possible something could make me happier, but it would probably involve famous actors and very little clothing.)

This blog will ultimately be about writing. Reasons to write, ways of writing, experiments with words. The search for common threads, an encompassing idea of writing that I can relate to in three dimensions. In the process I will over-share with the universe, and possibly some actual humans.

As with most things I have encountered in nineteen years of life, there will probably be more questions than answers.


A note about the magic cephalopod:

The title of this blog is a reference to Lynda Barry's magnificently odd book What It Is. Barry, a Witch of the Wise and the Weird, instructs writers to “follow the magic cephalopod.” What is the magic cephalopod? Well, that's really up to you. I suppose the cephalopod is a sort of muse. For me, it is the bringer of all things creative, beautiful, and inexplicable. It jumps into existence at two a.m. and squishes around on my desk, holding out words, sentences, images. It speaks its wisdom and vanishes. The cephalopod can visit anybody, but a writer tries to chase it back into its world. This is no easy task, because it has not run away: it has disappeared. There is no trail to follow. There is only a glazed eye in a mirror, a tentacle glimpsed through branches, a small squelch as you're falling asleep. This is the magic cephalopod.