Writing is More than Words

Writing, in it's purest, most true form, is like pouring your soul onto a paper. It's letting all your personal ideas and values stream into an insecure area, where they can be contended, challenged, manipulated, and morphed into something better or worse than before. It's transforming your hopes and dreams from the vapor they were inside your head to the concrete reality of a sheet of paper. It's exposing your innermost thoughts and ideals to praise, criticism, and ridicule, open to theft and disambiguation. It's like standing in your pajamas in front of a firing squad, with only your skin, that thin layer of self-preservation, between you and speeding lead.

If that is writing, then we need to consider the ramifications of its galactic impact. Writing is intrinsically cathartic, and that is why we can feel so much emotion from reading about something that we never have and never will experience. Therefore, writing merits mutual respect to make sure that this emotional power is protected. This mutual respect is shown by not claiming others' ideas and words as our own.

We don't like our siblings borrowing our clothes; why would we like other people “borrowing” our ideas? If we look at writing as a way to release our inner emotions, using someone's idea as your own isn't just taking their words - it's taking a part of them. When we properly credit the words and ideas we use to their original source, it's showing the author that their words have made an impact on us, that their ideas made us think in new ways. This is not a disrespectful gesture, but a form of praise, signaling to the author that their words have sparked change. And isn't that what we all seek to do? We write to release our emotions because we think it will help us get through hard times or remember good times in years to come. We want to be changed because of it, and if our writing changes others along the way, then so be it.