CIM408 - Week One - Response

Like many things worth doing, writing is an endeavour. It seems that whilst words can flow through the keyboard, concepts and ideas get lost upon their way to the paper. I was reading continually as a child, and as I developed, I focused on my ‘voice’ as a writer. It seems that now I am older, I have a voice, but no meaning.

Narratives often seem vague and unoriginal, essays meander through endless paragraphs saying almost nothing. “Concise” is a term imagined in a dream, where people speak simply and accurately. I ask myself, “Why can I write writhing rings of reckless rambles but not simply state my case?”.

In short: I have trouble writing concisely.

And yet I enjoy the flourishes of my writing. It is akin to my game development, a tool to create and maintain a world hitherto unthought of.  It stream of consciousness that imparts my mind at the time of writing, filled with dreams of grandeur. And I know that when I look at this in a few days, I will find my writing alien, to even myself.

It is probably why I find essays to be such obstacles to my progression. I have been taught that there is no place for filigree in an essay. Say the truth, prove the truth, and move on to the next point. There is a place for the simplicity involved there, but I haven’t found it yet. I take my essays, I refine them and grind them. I snip pieces from every branch and cultivate it in the hopes that it will suffice. I often submit the literary equivalent of a gargantuan thorny rosebush.

And now I direct my attention toward these very words. A paradox of sorts, an examination of my own writing. So many questions to answer, and each answer sprouts more questions. In writing in this manner, I have chosen to relax, and let my writing flow in the most “me” way that I can. Is this a mistake? Should I have attempted to refine an area that I find difficult? I suppose I will find out.

I am not that good at relaxing…

Let us answer a question then. “Do you write with an audience in mind?”. I do, but not the actual audience. Whilst I do have the knowledge that this will be read by my peers and lecturer in my mind, I write for an imaginary audience. The perfect audience that no author ever had. They sit, and read, and absorb that which I put forth with little judgement passing that upon my grammar, or a particularly dense phrase. Simultaneously, I write for an empty auditorium. As a reader that visualises scenes more than studying the individual words, I tend towards the same when writing. Thus, I hear my own voice, albeit, a more resonant and timbred sound than ever left my mouth. It echoes within the chambers of my consciousness, and maybe this is why I tend towards grandeur, toward writing patterns that reek of pomposity and conceit. When they are rendered in that tone, they sound even, measured and fair. It is this sound that I strive to impart.

Do I write with an audience in mind? Yes. I write for the audience that is my mind.

Thus, I write of forests made luscious with life. Of canyons that reek of heat, with dry and dusty wind. I speak of the floating isles, in the sky or in the sea. And I visualise them, and I write for my own audience. Because I know of no way to ever convey this to my reader, save that the reader is myself.

Would that I could describe a mans face with a sufficient amount of metaphorical statements, that you could visualise him. Stocky and lean, a soldier worn by years. His stubble peeks through skin made dark by crackling mud. Wild hair made tame by a leather band, like the wild man made tame by a leather will.

In is my earnest desire that you see him. His face, his stance. Desperately unyielding, in the way of one that knows that he only has so many years before his defiance is taken from him, before he is made a mockery of health. The tender balance between cherishing your remaining years, and dreading those to come. Yet he stands, proud, made strong by the years that have already passed.
 
What is my writing.
My writing is the creation of worlds.
My writing is the connection of shared ideals.
My writing is the futility of an outstretched hand that does not know how to grasp.
 

Peter Carey