The Experience of Writing

The experience of writing...

Helen Keller said it best:

"It seems to me that the great difficulty of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our confused ideas, half feelings, half thoughts, when we are little more than bundles of instinctive tendencies. Trying to write is very much like trying to put a chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design. But we keep on trying because we know that others have succeeded, and we are not willing to acknowledge defeat." (The Story of My Life, chap XIV).

My experience of writing is similar to the above summary of Keller's self-expressed feelings towards the written language. However, Keller and I were born with more than a century between us, resulting in differences of both our society and uses of the english language.

Another difference between us is that I am neither blind nor deaf, where she was both. These disabilities provide her with an extreme disadvantage, yet she writes and expresses herself in such an advanced way, one that I could only dream and aspire to. At times she must have felt isolated and inescapably alone, left to her own device with nothing but time to internalize her thoughts and feelings; but, did this in-iteslf prove to be advantageous for Keller? She had the time to thoroughly think things through before she typed them.

"A look is often the very soul of what one says."(chap VII). Therefore, I may not have the ability to express myself through words the way she did, but I also rely on sight and sound as a means for self-expression, two things Keller did not have.

In conclusion, writing this blog entry out by pen and paper first, did prove to be enjoyable. I find it thrilling to stare at a blank piece of paper, because it conjures up inspiration for the words that I hope will come. However, it also makes writing more difficult. I dislike not having the ability to back-track and edit the way I can with modern day technology. Thus so far, this blog entry is not written in as organized a manner as I usually am able to achieve by means of a word processor on my mac laptop. Whereby I can cut, copy and paste my ideas into a more organized format at my leisure, Keller must have struggled with this also. Or, maybe it is all about what one gets used too? We are, after all conditioned by our surroundings and I am surrounded by - the digital era.