Shall I compare thee

October 20, 2009

To a chatting room that I sit in right now on our third floor in Moseley Hall?

Why? Because whenever I think about writing as transcribing thoughts on paper, I am like a well running dry. The meditative mode of thinking seems to shut me in like an island that is isolated to the rest of the world. My words become boring and my thoughts linear. I rigidly walk to a goal that I have set to myself, with gaps and deserts on the way.

A chatting room, however, is a place that is open to different thoughts and ideas, voices and angles, perspectives and lenses, calmness and anger and wit. Writing, the trace I leave on the paper or computer screen, is a much lively space once I allow these different voices in, letting them agree and admire, or disagree and contend.

So I compare writing to a chatting room, with people come in to talk, not always agreeing with one another, but openly discuss.


A collaborative project to promote the National Day on Writing by the Bowling Green State University Writing Center and the Center for Online and Blended Learning.