Part of being a writer is the rewrite. I do most of my emotional processing via writing, then reading, then thinking, then writing again. Sometimes talking gets involved in there somewhere too, or email correspondence. Whatever. Words, I process with words and I do realize (though it may not seem that way) that other people don’t necessarily process the same way. And unlike a piece of writing, there doesn’t seem to be an end to the emotional process, though I suppose there could be a situational end. And I suppose that in that situation, it is possible to process – to rewrite – until there is nothing of substance left, no passion, no quirk, no personality, just academic smoothness. And that’s what I have to be careful of, considering that I AM a writer and that I happen to process emotionally the same way. I can’t let the art and craft of writing take priority over the message.

And yet, words ARE powerful things. Writing provides an opportunity to get it right that spoken word just doesn’t have. Writing lets me think before I speak. Writing allows me to consider things from other perspectives – as many as I can think of – before I let words loose. But still. Still. Writing instead of speaking allows more space for lies, both intentional and unintentional, conscious and unconscious. What’s more, writing as a form of expressing emotional processing to someone else carries still another pitfall, and that is that I, as the writer, leave my emotional processing open to someone’s interpretation without the benefit of immediate questioning for clarification, without the added nuance of body language, without the sixth sense, the intuition that comes from the synthesis of all these things.

Pretty words. And they’re true, at least for me. Truth is often, after all, a very personal matter.