Monday Morning Writing Motivation: Write Your Magic

caweyant (56)in #writing • 7 years ago

A piece of writing is like a piece of magic. You create something out of nothing.
— Susanna Clarke

Writing is an act of creation. One moment, the page or screen or napkin is blank, and the next there are words, symbols, meanings there that weren't a moment ago. Even in a rough draft, complete with crossed-out sentences and inserted phrases, is magic in a way — not the neat Harry Potter-style "say something and magic just kind of happens," but a very messy sort of magic that takes time and attention and experimentation. It is a kind of magic that takes practice, which requires trial and error, and which is unpredictable, rarely conjuring the thing you thought it would.

Of course, writing is never created entirely out of nothing. There are the materials of writing, the pen and paper or the computer or whatever medium you use to solidify your ideas. But there is also the history of the writer. All of the background of your experiences, your thoughts, your emotions, the random ideas that pop into your brain that may you think, "I wonder…" get put into the mix of your writing, and it is those experiences, thoughts, emotions and random ideas which become the source of thing written. They are the ingredients of magic, the potions mixed, the spells uttered, the flicks of the wrist as the pen-wand waves in the writer's hand.

The real magic of writing isn't in the writing itself but in the reading. It is in the ability to evoke – or perhaps invoke is a better word – entirely new experiences, emotions, thoughts, and ideas in another person. Everyone who reads what you've written has their own history, but through the magic of writing you can share the spell you've cast, and it will change them. It's a one-way transmogrification, and while it cannot make them understand exactly how you come to write what you did, it can help them see the aura and prompt their own response.

What will you create with your magic today?

Susanna Clarke: A piece of writing is like a piece of magic