To say that I enjoy writing would be to put it extremely mildly.  Writing for me is a therapeutic exercise, much like talking to a shrink; it’s a way of putting all your ideas out there, not just for others to see, but for one’s own personal benefit– to better structure them.  Writing is not the product of thinking, it’s a first step in full-dimensional thinking.  It’s not just a process of creation, it’s a collaborative process between the writer and the reader; the book is an intermediary for something bigger.  The writer has grand ideas and concepts, and must structure them to convey those ideas, but what the reader does with the ideas is something new entirely.  Every reader’s mind is another context for what is read, which is why reading comments on what I write is so exciting.

In ancient times, writing was something different entirely.  It was limited to a small number of scribes; not anyone could become a scribe, and it required intensive training.  In those times, there was a certain amount of wonder for writing; some even considered it magic– to write something, was to make that something true.  Because we’ve democritized writing, we don’t really pay much attention to it anymore, because anyone can do it.  Indeed, every so often, we hear grim pronouncements about how print is dead.  We see people reading less and less and to no surprise, writing is degrading as this trend accelerates.  Text messaging, Twittering, instant messages and e-mail, these are great inventions.  But the speed at which the information now flies has made it so that there’s so little care exercised in the crafting of text, particularly texts written as messages.

When it took weeks for letters to reach other people, letters were longer– some letters (saved by notability due to some kind of relation to a famous historical person) stretched on to the length of a short novel.  These letters then shortened to less than ten pages as the time went down to under a week.  Now, with e-mails and text messages, you’re lucky if you get a complete sentence.  There’s something to this, but I can’t exactly put my finger on it.

Personally, I take great enjoyment in writing an e-mail in the style of letters; with a proper salutation, a body composed of sentences joined in paragraphical structure, then a valediction.  I don’t do this with everybody; I’m hardly perfect or immune from culture, so sometimes I do send of quick e-mails to friends or family with the barest amount of information.  In general, however, I try to stick to a formal structure, simply because it lends an air of respect for the recipient by writing to everyone the same as I write to my professors, employers, and politicians.  That, in my opinion, is true democracy in writing.

This is not to say that I’m fuming over the changes in how we communicate– text messages, Twittering, and instant messaging have their uses and the short form they provide is necessary.  Recently, with the issues surrounding the Iranian Election, Twitter became the prime source for information from Tehran.  However, it’s important to note that this may be more so due to the fact that 140 characters is quite a bit to put out when you’re on the run from the Basij, police and military and trying desperately to tell the story.  This is not a sign of Twitter’s general utility in anything but providing tiny snapshots of one’s life; however poignant the snapshots may be for those in Iran, the majority of Tweets in the US are fairly banal, to be honest.

But there is much to be said about the ability to zip off quick packs of information anywhere at anytime to anyone who might need it at that moment; as a result, I’m an avid texter.  I used to be opposed to the idea in general, but over time the potential became too great.  From being able to text a friend to see if he’s gotten out of class to see if we can get together, to messaging someone who has the all-important final report for a major group project to see if they’re en route, text messaging has certainly become a necessity in a sense.  In the fall, I’m switching phone plans in part because I need unlimited texting to handle how much damage I do in a month.  However, even in text messages, I still write complete words in full sentences– which I’m noticing makes me something of an oddity, but I’ve never had anyone complain about the lack of brevity in my messages because the length is outweighed by perfect clarity of meaning.

I don’t want this to be some kind of guide for other people, that I’m beating them over the head to use.  Simply put, I just would like people to consider their writing.  Try to imagine it as they did in ancient times, for just a moment, as a kind of magic.  Think about how anything you write has power to it, and if you want that power to be short and jumbled, not fully formed or understood, or if you want that magic to have form and full functionality.  You don’t have to be perfect on this all the time; thinking on it is more than enough.  But perhaps writing an e-mail formally once a month might just make the difference for someone else.  I know I feel a bit uplifted when someone writes me an e-mail in a formal manner, just because it says to me that they care enough to do so.

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