There's a Stranger in my Words

There's a Stranger in my Words

As I sit here and stare at the Mac

I wonder who sits at my back?

If they knew what I write

Would they curse me and bite

Or start up some verbal attack?

Well, as I walk through the swirling, smoke filled sky of the Hagg-Sauer doorway, squeezing my eyes shut against the reflected sunlight, I thought about how I would approach this project. How to say what I need to say, without saying it in a way that has been said a thousand times, in a million-million words.

The voices in my head struggle to escape to the paper, but there's this thing in between my thoughts and your eyes...my mind. Language that I would _never_ actually use in speaking to someone seems to just flow, driven by some primal "college survival" instinct, from my fingertips when I sit down at the word-hatcher with an assignment in hand. This has become a real dilemma, as I now struggle for true expression and attempt to beat back the demons of 15 years worth of practice at the 'official style' of writing.

_I feel that I have become quite well adapted to writing the language which has become the "common coin of the realm" at colleges and Universities._ I could sit here and write puffed up, stagnant, and wordy paragraph after paragraph, and still hold the interest of many of my instructors. But that is not my desire...I seek to free my muse from the shackles of formulae, the bondage of format, and the unrelenting ambiguity of "the same old stuff."

When does your _voice_, that engaging part of your writing which bridges topic and audience, become sensible and engaging?

Is it when you _feel it_ working, when the point seems to be making its way onto the page or screen in front of you?

Does it depend more on the person reading the thing you gave them? If this is true, then our discussion begins to degenerate into the absurd...

If the success of my writing comes from you, the reader, then I can never be sure of its effectiveness before talking to you about it, can I? And if this is the case, then maybe it is best that there _is_ a fixed format to write into with college work. Pigeon holes, indeed!

And yet, when the smoke clears and the debris is swept away, sometimes I feel that the real me, my thoughts and feelings, come through onto the page.