I was chatting with a friend on IM, when I caught a typo. I had written 'set' instead of 'seat'. I chuckled because it was wrong, but it was still a real word. It made me think, of all the possible combinations of all the letters in our alphabet, so few of them make real words. Even if we make real words, we still have to put them in the right order to make real sentences. And even if we make real sentences, it is even rarer to make random ones that make any sense.
If this sounds familiar, it could be that you've heard the saying that if you fill a room with monkeys on typewriters, they will eventually bang out the works of Shakespeare. As an insult to writers, it's decent. Realistically, it's silly.
Writing is a deliberate act. Everything we do is planned, shaped, crafted, and honed. Even if our ideas and our methods are random, our final product is always just the way we want it. It's no coincidence. It is not some miracle of statistics that our writing ends up the way it does. We aren't banging on keyboards and hoping for the best.
Remember this the next time you lose your heart or are banging your head on your keyboard. It may take a great deal of time to make your writing just right, but you have all the time in the world (except when you're on a deadline). In the end, it will always be as it should be. Your writing is no accident.
About Me
- Kevin Bahler
- I am a writer. A writer is one who writes. By the same logic, I am also a thinker, an observer, and a puzzle solver. I am a graduate from the State University of New York at Cortland with a degree in Professional Writing. The idea of the program is that one studies all three aspects of writing as a whole: Creative Writing, Technical Writing, and Rhetoric. The knowledge I have gained in those subjects is put to use in every aspect of my life. The worst thing a person can be is boring. I am most interested in people who can pique my interests. An example is people who can correctly use the word 'pique'.
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