Roxilla

sometimes words have no meaning

As any blogger can attest, words are kind of a big deal. We use them to express how we feel, get across our thoughts and tell stories. They come out of our hearts, or our anger, frustration, wistfulness or dreams. We get to use them however we want, whenever we want. It’s rewarding, therapeutic and soothing – even if we are just writing for ourselves.

When you write for a living though, the meanings change. The words come from a brief, a list of keywords, a vague email from a client. Each word, sentence, paragraph or page is carefully structured and the right tone, the right word count and the right keywords are essential. It’s a conscious and contrived process all the way, even if you eventually do learn to perfect the art of nearly automatic writing. You learn to conjure up 350 plus words on things you know almost nothing about, and things that you wish you knew nothing about. Whole pages on the most pointless drivel you could imagine, and other times just a few short paragraphs on fascinating things that were a pleasure to research and write about.

You spend about 70% of your day automatically finding synonyms as you write. Because after you have used the words ‘stunning’, ‘ensure’, ‘spectacular’ or my personal favourite ‘as well as’ once or twice in your page, you soon realise that it’s not always easy saying it another way. Keywords then need to be considered too, how you have used them, where you have used them, and how you can avoid using them elsewhere.

Each word, each line and each page comes from somewhere though. Somehow, page after page, the words always keep coming – and while sometimes, just before 5pm (ok, often soon after 4pm) they are harder to find, and don’t always come out the way you want them to, there are still enough words for after-hours work, and blogging, and Twitter and chatting and emails.

One of my biggest fears is that one day the words will stop. Or rather, that one day I will not be able to find the right ones. I’ve had stressful times when they felt wrong, but weren’t wrong. I’ve had happy times when they looked fine, and on proofing turned out to be rather not fine.

I have been in the writing game for a good few years now, I wonder when that teeny tiny little fear will stop popping up from time to time. Maybe when The Fear stops, the words will stop with it?

Or maybe that should be the other way around.

That’s the thing, when the words are so connected to your thoughts that there is barely any line between them, it all becomes rather entangled and you realise that without the words, there would not be much left at all. Not much left, not much place to go – I would probably quite likely end up in the loony bin if they stopped, basically.

*ponders sleepily*

Time for the words to take a bow, while my poor overworked brain takes a long bubble bath and a much-needed sleep!