What writing does

A friend asked me about my writing process, she’d been struggling to start and was looking for something that would free her from the jam, and I froze, even though I’ve been writing every day for years, I couldn’t find one useful thing to say, though hers is perhaps the most common question of anyone trying to write, and it scratched the part of my brain that gets restless when it can’t connect the dots it thinks it should, as if on some level I know writing does something magical for me and still can’t put it into words, and that day I found myself repeating a question in my head, What does writing do?, which at first seemed too big to ask, since we all have reasons for loving what we do that we’re barely aware of, and putting that much subjectivity into words seemed impossible, until I came across What Art Does by Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse, who drew and wrote their way toward what art does, and reading it made me feel allowed to ask the same of writing, and I think I already know the answer, because I was like her once, trying to write for the longest time and cursing myself when I couldn’t, until about three years ago I fell into a mental turmoil I couldn’t get out of, and I started writing, and it never stopped, so the answer is in there somewhere, and I’ll keep this blog open as I dig it up slowly, until the itch goes away, and hopefully the next time she asks, I’ll have something to say.

This essay was written keeping in line with the philosophy: An essay is a single sentence