Francis L Guenette – What Does Writing Do for You?

What Does Writing Do for You?

by Francis Guenette

I now walk into the wild . . . . (John Krakauer)

Krakauer was a mountaineer and writer who explored the impulse that leads one to outdoor adventure. His words about the wild call out to me. Not because I want an outdoor adventure, though it might be good for me to shuck off the chains of the laptop and go outside. More like it perfectly expressed what I think about writing.

The word wild digs down deep into my thoughts – wild child, wild one, wild and woolly, a wild, wild ride. An interesting word, it finds its way into a sentence in different ways.

As an adjective – not domesticated or cultivated

As an adverb – in an uncontrolled manner

Noun – a natural area, an uncultivated or uninhabited region

Synonyms, for an adjective – savage, mad, feral. For a noun – wilderness, waste

The writing was savage.

I wrote, madly out of control.

My writing went off into the wilderness, a strange and feral land.

I block out a scene, write a piece of dialogue, consider an action sequence, peek inside a character’s thoughts and motivations. I am on that path into the wild. I have no idea where it will take me.

Writing takes me over. I breathe it, eat it, and sleep with it. There is no getting away. I go out for a walk, talk on the phone to family and friends, tune into a TV show or radio broadcast, spend countless hours maintaining my social media platform, talk with my husband. None of these essential life diversions can actually get me away from the story. The wild territory of the writing is still there, always playing out just below the surface of whatever I’m doing. I’m hooked, the story has a hold on me, and I can’t shake it. It’s an uncultivated region that only I can plough and plant and harvest. I must inhabit it, live and breathe life into the landscape.

Writing is a savage endeavour. Writing exhausts me, it invigorates me, it drives me crazy, and it fulfills me – a dichotomous activity that personifies the word oxymoron. Writing gives my life meaning.

What does writing do for you?

41wkDZwvUkL