Regarding The Art of Wordsmithing
There's a common adage that can be applied to pretty much any endeavor, but I'll apply it here for the sake of this Blog: "If writing were easy, everybody would do it."
Let's be really honest about writing: It takes work. It takes effort. It takes time. It takes energy. It takes focus. It takes concentration. To do it well, it also takes fluency and technical foundations in your primary language. It takes artistry and adaptability. Depending on the type of writing you're doing, it may also require an unfathomable degree of creativity and imagination (potentially to the point that some people may question your functional grip on reality).
It may not look like it in comparison to other art forms, especially with the modern tendency to use computers and word software instead of pen and paper, but writing is incredibly messy. There may not be splattered tubes of paint or piles of half-dead markers mucking up the work space. There may not be stacks of half-finished paintings or charcoal-laden sketchbooks filling the shelves. There may not be a craft room filled to bursting with fabric and Hobby Lobby leftovers requiring the door to be shut when company comes over. But writing is still messy. I'm not talking about the random notebooks and Post-It notes that frequently clutter a writer's desk either. Oh, no. I'm referring to the mess that is created within a writer's head during the creative process - that mental space that looks like a pack of toddlers ransacked the playroom in the middle of snack time before passing out in the middle of the floor with a dripping sippy cup of fruit punch in one hand and a bowl of slobbery, smashed up Cheezits in the other.
That's right, folks. Writing is that kind of messy.
You have your toolbox in the corner, crammed with vocabulary and grammar tools. You have character names, descriptions, back stories, and development spilling out of the closets. You have story arcs, subplots, overarching themes and narratives stacked high and toppling off the tables. You have dialogues and monologues piled up on the shelves. You have new ideas and inspirations constantly slipping through the mail slot to scatter across the floor. You have old ideas and partially started works piled up in the sink. Criticisms and negative feedback float in the toilet, refusing to be completely flushed away. Self-doubt and "Imposter Syndrome" are the mold and mildew that grow under the sink, making everything stink no matter how hard you scrub at it. In the mean time, Real Life keeps dropping things in the middle of the floor for you to trip on. Sometimes Real Life even leaves its crap on top of your resource piles and buries what you need for when you're finally ready to start using it.
Some people are better at sorting through this mess. They might parcel out bits and pieces of their clutter and put them in a storage unit such as a notebook, journal, or series of word documents. Some people are better at scrubbing away the putrid and nasty bits from their mental space. They thoroughly love and promote their cleaning products like "Positive Thinking" and "Let it Go!" Other people learn how to adapt to the chaos and thrive on having everything present in their space all at once.
Assuming you can get your headspace organized enough to function, Wordsmithing itself can be an arduous process. Hopefully you were fortunate enough to have a language arts teacher (or teachers) who gave you plenty of tools and training in how to use them. (Also, one would hope that you paid some degree of attention when that language arts teacher provided these tools and training.) While a large portion of writing is simply figuring out what to say, the true wordsmith excels at How it's said. They polish their descriptions to a lustrous shine. They make their word choices with awareness of how vocabulary can shape and color their work. They trim off the fluff and stuff shiny, crunchy bits inside when its meaningful to do so. The wordsmith goes beyond writing for the sake of putting words together, and makes language into art. They invoke feelings. They create images. They draw you in beyond the text on the page and into a moment of shared perception between the author and the reader. They create that mental movie where you see the story playing out even as it continues on the page.
Can anybody write? Sure! All that writing requires is a basic application of learned skills and the willingness to do it. Can anybody write well? That depends on what they're willing to put into it.
Learn, grow, adapt, create, and when you're done creating, create again. There's not really any right or wrong way to go about it. There's no guaranteed blueprints to writing excellence. You just have to do it. The more you use your creative skills and tools, the more proficient you can become. But nobody ever created anything without at least trying.
