May: The Beginning of Summer

Today was a slow day, and a hot one. I went to soccer games—two of them—to cheer on my brother. I read a page or two of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Throughout the week, I have been working on the kingdoms of my book: how they look, the landscapes, how I picture them in my head. Although any image I find, it seems it’s not enough for my imagination. I am creating a mood board, and it’s going along well. On Thursday, I had a horse-riding lesson. I have a lot of work to do. I jumped a little bit higher, and at the end, I’m sometimes too hard on myself, but I’m learning, and there is a lot to learn from. Some friends I know are graduates from high school, going off to college. I couldn’t attend the ceremony, but I was thrilled when a friend who was part of the event sent me a video. I have heard a lot of news, rumors, and things that can disturb my peace in life, but I’ve learned to tone it down just by scrolling on my phone or reading articles.

My writing has been slow. The first draft of my book has 53,338 words, and I’m going to be rewriting major key moments, since some of the chapters don’t add up at all. First, I have to get my thoughts together and organize the world and the continent they live in. I’m excited and thrilled, still figuring a thing or two along the path of writing a book. But this is not the topic of today’s newsletter. Today, I’m going to be re-typing something I wrote on my “Notes” app on my phone that struck me as inspiration. It’s not a poem. It’s a little essay, monologue—I don’t know what to call these things. I decided to call it: Reading & Writing.

Reading. A common word. For a common thing. A thing with words and a number of pages with a story within. And us, as people who read those books, magazines, newsletters, essays, and even short stories, call ourselves readers. And, according to the dictionary, that word means “a person who reads or who is fond of reading…” I’ve seen many things recently about what is the right way to read a book. No boundaries. I believe reading is an experience. An expression. Something that we enjoy simply to read. We can learn a thing or two. Spill tears and cries. Show our emotions. Enjoy that story that the writers are telling us. Reading is what others cannot write. Writing is what others cannot imagine. Entertaining. Teaching. Building, perhaps, something parallel to our reality. Writing.

You cannot explain how you write, for a true writer writes out of thin air. It may not be the best of works; it may be the randomness of times, but somehow we understand what they are trying to speak towards the fellow person who picked up their work. Readers seek books to learn more—a way, we can say, of escaping the true world. Letting our imagination soar. Writers write for many differences: heartbreak, depression, sadness, joy, love, peace, purpose, inspiration, coaching, significance. There’s a lot of reasons for the art of writing, and then the art of reading those things. Anyone can do it. Both go hand in hand for what we think and shape our world to be. Both are overwhelmingly one of the most powerful things we have. It challenges us—the way we think, speak, and share with others. I’m not saying—yes, there are those who leave it to a robot to write their works—that is undeniable.

Like Maya Angelou once wrote in her book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” You have to pour anything you have onto a sheet of paper, your hand, a note, a napkin—whatever you do when you are inspired. Writing is the thought, and reading the product writers create to express themselves.

Virginia Woolf also wrote once, “Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” Free your mind and soar up inside that head of yours, will you?

Anaïs Nin said, “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” Writing is the process of defying what we believe and separating right from wrong, and wrong from what we think is right.

As a writer and reader, poet, and just a person writing here to you today, I think most of you are either one or the other—maybe both—or maybe you’re just a person who happened to read this. I want to tell you that if you start with a sentence, it will end up being a paragraph, and that paragraph will turn into a page, and that page will become many pages. Just don’t think about it too much. I often fall upon that mistake—a little too much of a handful. Just write what your heart is telling you to, and your mind is thinking, and your soul is speaking.

Until next time.

Happy Writing,

SMS