Word lover vs. sentence writer

I was invited recently to join an online writing group, to toss around ideas/pieces and to (I presume) get a bit of feedback. And I am gut-churningly sick with apprehension. Because even I thought this was odd, I thought a bit about my reaction and tried to tease out why I react in that way... and I think it's rooted in my relationship with words. So, what follows is my bumbling attempt to detail that relationship, and provide a bit of contrast between myself and the writers of the world.

I was an English major in college because I love to read, and I love to read because I love words. I like the aesthetics of them written, and I like the mouthfeel of different words (minds out of the gutter!). By mouthfeel I mean that a word like "vernacular," for instance, has a very different sort of feeling when said aloud, when compared to a word like "correspondence." Or "candle" has a different rolling weight than "wick." I love words on their own, I love them strung together, and I love to try and figure out why authors choose the words they did. I like to sub synonyms into sentences and see if it "feels" different when I re-read it. Sentences obviously have structure -- but each also has a texture all their own. Just as silk and satin feel different sliding across the fingertips, as tulle and netting work best in different roles, words have specific feelings and a utility that I find captivating.

There is another type of person that sees words more as a means to an end -- just as I view insects as a proxy to explore larger environmental questions -- these people, these writers, use words to convey stories to the world at large. And that is a wonderful, mysterious thing. These people have an apparently innate ability to write for an audience. The drive seems rooted in a need to tell, to express, to bring the world out of a dark place. And, if that sort of thing can be taught, I wasn't. However, because my undergraduate university was excellent, and many of my cohort turned out to be quite successful in their pursuit of higher degrees in English, I suspect it can't be -- at least not easily.

So, I spent my time as an explorer; an essayist of works I loved; plumbing the depths of syntax; historical and cultural context; wondering about word choices. I loved the synthesis. But I was not very good at creating things. Perhaps like a good scientist, I subscribed too closely to the idea that matter could be neither created or destroyed? Surely not -- that is far too romantic. But I never felt the pull to create and share. Sure, I can write passably well, and I do like to jot off the odd poem once and again, but even that, really, is an exercise in word play. Dammit, I just love words!

Oddly, perhaps, this makes me feel like less of a "writer." I feel abashed when facing other writers, others destined to become authors; as though, somehow, I count a little less because all I want to do is read their writing, love it, turn it over a little to see what might be tweaked, to see what I walk away from the piece feeling, to describe what I love about the weight of specific words, phrases, sentences. Somehow, too, wanting to be the author of a book or collection of stories (or being the author) makes them "Real Authors," capital R, capital A. I know my path holds scientific publications, and I've had a poem or two published in regional and college magazines, but I remain discomposed. I can't see myself on par, because writing prose (just prose, not an essay) feels so difficult for me.  

Let me not be misunderstood, however -- I wouldn't change myself if I could. I don't want to lose the little gut flutter I get when I hear or read a sentence that hits me as being just-so-perfect, when a sentence seems to get across what I think the author is saying impeccably and I can look and say, emphatically "I hear you! I really hear you!"  

I try and remind myself that this fear of shunning is a figment of my imagination and that, surely, writing must be akin to running -- if you run, then you are a runner. If you write, then, you are a writer.

 

I can be a writer. Though, at heart, I will first always be a logophile (a lover of words) or, perhaps, if you'll allow me to borrow from Richard Lederer, a verbivore.