Oh, This is Cool

We are in a classroom! When I found out, my very first reaction was to check and make sure I didn’t have any crumbs on my face. Because you can totally tell from my writing that I’m sitting around with crumbs on my face.

Well, I don’t know. Maybe you can. Maybe there’s a way I write when I have crumbs on my face and y’all have figured it out.

Anyway, visitors, here’s what I would say to you. At first, learning to write suuuucckkkksss. Sucks. Oh, god, it sucks so bad. But I’ve been learning to write for thirty years now and it’s eventually pretty awesome. It’s like learning to make a map. When you’re first learning to make maps, you’re like “Oh, ha ha! The person I drew the map for eventually got where I wanted her to go! Score one for me!” But later, when you’re learning to make maps, you’re like “I want to be sure the person I’m drawing this map for can find her way to some place to eat and that she recognizes this bend in the river where the ducks will come right up to the shore and show you their babies if you sit quietly long enough before she gets where I want her to go.” And when that works, it’s so awesome.

But there’s going to come a day when you’re learning to write when you write something and someone’s going to read it and she’s going to be like “Damn, I read what you wrote and I had to write something myself.” Or maybe she’ll have to paint a picture or sing a song or dance a dance your work made her think of.

And that feeling. Oh, god. Well, when it happens, then you’ll know why learning to write well is worth it. Like learning to make maps, in the end, isn’t about getting the person using the map to where you want her to go. It’s about giving her what she needs to go where she wants to.