This is something I wrote last night. I am posting it unedited, because I believe in first drafts. (I'm not sure what I mean by that. But I must mean something.)


I have the old Itch again. The one that will not be satisfied until I sit and pound on these keys. I do not know where it comes from, not for certain, but I have some possible ideas. Perhaps it stems from a great many sources, only a few of which I have nailed down as even remotely possible.

The Itch overwhelms. A writer is very much like a photographer in my mind. How so? you ask. In countless ways. The same number of ways as words in a picture’s landscape.

It is a popularized notion that looking at the world from a photographer’s point of view is quite different than looking at it from the perspective of the ordinary citizen. The concept that a photographer thinks more in potential snapshots than an average thinker is romanticized in literature, on television, and, in particular, in the world of art. But I hardly think that it can be that peculiar from the way a writer perceives his surroundings.

I find myself, when the aforementioned hankering to scribble (or type, as the case may be) seizes me, catching glimpses of essays, stories, and tales in all the things about me. Something as simple as a pencil or a razor may cause me to cast off all reason and contemplate which aspect of my word photograph I ought to set down from flighting notions to solid words.

The incessant longing to say something of worth and nothing of worth is caused most often by an anomalous state of mind we call “inspiration.” This inspiration very rarely comes solely from the heart of the writer, but rather is sparked by an outstanding occasion in the experience of the one under the cursed Itch. The oddest thing about this phenomenon is that non-writers typically cannot find the value in that which caused the inspiration. It may be as commonplace as an unlit match to the innocent bystander, but to the one who has caught on fire, it is like unto a dazzling display of artillery.

Communication is a marvel in itself. The fact that I can conceive an abstract idea and convey it to another being totally unattached to me is so astounding that when I really think about it, I have to wrestle with it. The most astonishing element of the Communication-Miracle is that most of us don't really have to be TAUGHT how to communicate: it is innate, ingrained in us from the time of birth. "If I act, there is a response."

And THEN consider all the different METHODS of communication we possess. Our minds can think abstractly, put them into words, convert them into muscle movements (of the tongue, vocal chords, etc), the listener's ear picks up the sound, converts it back into words and then the brain of another can comprehend the abstract idea that I started with. It's like a racetrack where the Finish Line is identical to the Start Line. The original idea is a negative, and the outcome is a new snapshot in the mind and comprehension of another

Writing is just as complicated, if not more so. Instead of naturally learned phonetics, we form the words into visual symbols, which in part would have no meaning, but in whole have limitless possibilities of type of communication. Dictionaries, theology, sci-fi, biography, the Word of God. Amazing! Amazing amazing.

The things I so take for granted are always the things that cause me to jump back in awe when I take the few minutes to deliberate over the complexity of them.