Written by Daniel MacGregor

Thumbnail and Header Photo by Clever Visuals on Unsplash

This article is sponsored by Pup in Progress Dog Training.

Read more about Pup in Progress Dog Training at the bottom of the article.

After many months of cobbling together articles for the Arts & Culture section, like the blooms of water lilies, it seems my time at the Journal has come to an end. But much like a wilting flower, this is also an opportunity to pass down a seedling for future growth.

Often, what has been covered in this section has been related to literature, be it trying to understand it in the forms of fiction deep dives or how one can get involved in the story writing scene; however, what has yet to be unearthed is the question of why we write. This is not alluding to the mechanics of writing but rather, the human desire to write, to craft worlds that never have and never will exist except for within the shared consciousness of one, a dozen, or thousands of minds. Of course, this article is only written by one person, not the whole of humanity. Sadly, I can only report on my own personal forays into wordplay and, in the journey, hope that some segment of my experience touches upon the shared human experience.

While it is true that many professional writers craft stories, research articles, or even articles to meet a deadline, to make some form of monetary compensation in a way that seems all too mechanical, this is true for any passion. Moreover, automatic writing is often only the price paid until one reaches the next charging port of inspiration.

But the actual writing of something is, in essence, the easiest part; simply putting words on a page is easy, for example: peanut, hamster, breeze. The difficulty comes not from the words, but the meaning one wishes to bestow onto them. And while Hollywood loves to depict this as a sudden flash of inspiration bursting out of one’s heart, the truth is sadly more prosaic. At first, stories and fantasies were simply an escape. When the world became too real, it was easy to escape into Lords of the Rings or The Expanse. But though we are told these worlds are make-believe, a part of our brain becomes entrenched, like a momentary visitor or tourist in these worlds. And while this segment of ourselves is poking and prodding through these other worlds, it starts to ask first itself, and then us, how this world it has entered could be different. In an alternative reality spun off of this initial interaction, we begin to create our characters that were never meant to exist; we play with a world someone else has laid out for us, as if riding a bike with training wheels.

As our imagination explores more and more worlds and our silent additions to the creations of others multiplying, something extraordinary begins to happen. The characters and stories we haphazardly attached to this ancient pillar of storytelling start to take a life of their own. Our imaginations, increasingly skilled at playing with the tools set out for us by authors who have come before, become increasingly tingled in the restrictions and confinements of the world they did not create but only visited.

Timidly, our imaginations crave to take the DNA, the building blocks of what it has played with so far, and see what it, we, can create to join the cacophony of stories. But our most significant asset quickly turns into the restraining jacket that ties us down to earth. The giants whose shoulders we have stood upon are stretched far above the clouds. There is always the leech at the back of one's heart, sucking the desire to move forward, that warns us that any pile of twigs and malformed characters we might attempt to forge would always pale in comparison to the masterpieces that have been developed as if from the heat of a thousand suns with metal delivered from the heavens.

However, after years of slowly stewing in the ever-rising tides of characters and stories that plead to be born, as one is just about to drown in their wasted ambitions, it takes only the smallest amount of encouragement and courage to send out on an expedition into one’s own writing.

While at first, the only concern was how one's characters and worlds would compare to those that have come before, when one opens the door and truly steps through, all of that (or at least most) melts away. That first story may not be "great" but is simply the stepping stone into a hundred possible worlds. It is the first day of dreaming and imagining how the world in your mind may take shape, who will inhabit it, what their dreams are, what their failures are, and what their futures are. Once created, one story is not the end but the beginning of the following story that takes its place. And while mining deep within the recesses of one's mind, what is found while creating new worlds and characters is also what has always been there, your hopes, fears, and strengths. It is where we can give a pedestal to the things we love in this life and examine what we think needs to be addressed more critically. And while I have framed this as someone writing fiction, this same process holds for writing, from an academic flying to the farthest corners of academia and far past to a journalist shining a torch on the darkest depths of humanity and its highest triumphs.

One of the best feelings is not so much the writing of a story but the editing of it. During this refinement, after years of only seeing this world in your head, is when you are the first one to see it join existence, reality. While reading your own words, the story again takes shape in your mind, and you can see the world and the characters in it, not as the writer but as a reader. Your story has taken its first breath, and it is here for all its flaws and yours. This, I believe, is why we write.

This article was sponsored by Pup in Progress Dog Training.

The Journal would like to thank Pup in Progress Dog Training for supporting student journalism. If you’re looking for dog training and lessons look no further than Pup in Progress Dog Training.

You can contact Pup in Progress Dog Training by calling 902-844-1545 or by emailing pupinprogresstraining@gmail.com. You can also follow Pup in Progress Dog Training on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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