Word Game

Why do we write?   I think it is a curious love for words which starts writers on this endless journey. When I was younger I had a great ability in remembering spellings. It is gone now. Thanks to spell checking software. I think that love for words launches most writers on to this addiction of pen and paper or rather keyboards in the modern era.

There are so many words pouring out all around us. It reminds me of the song, ‘have you ever seen the rain?’ What can one do with this deluge of words skimming past our vision, unappreciated, unseen on laptop, tablet and computer screens?

I have a hundred writing projects started and all are stalled at various stages of word count. They are unexploded mines inside my laptop; poems, short stories, future novels, movie scripts and articles for my blog. When things really become bogged down I throw up my hands and grab a book to read.

The simplicity and ease with which Amy Tan writes her novels stuns me into silent submission. Oh Lord if I could only write like this about my cousins, brothers, aunts, parents, grandmothers, dentists, neighbors I would be a millionaire.

The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter’s Daughter are my favorites. Reading these books is like running the defragmenter of your software. It straightens out the empty spaces, the puddles, the bumps, aligns the reds, greens and yellows till your brain is again a fresh dew tipped green lawn of creativity.

Try it, it will work.