“Do you think anyone can write?” a friend muses, not holding for an answer. There is no defeated or condescending tone, just the offhand thought during one of those days when small talk feels small, but not insignificant.
On writing
It weighed on me with slight amusement, knowing a satisfying response eludes even myself. Writing is different to me than it is to an Albert Camus, a Bong Joon-ho, a Seth Godin, or the friend who unwittingly co-authored this passage.
I only know how to do what I do. There is peace in that. Even if the process or outcome occasionally seems lesser than the pursuit. In a world where there is plenty to discuss but little we can determine on our own, writing offers an accessible means to process uncertainty, if not sell it.
On spaces
But how do we shape some of that ambiguity?
Artists tend to create an impression of space through perspective, scale, contrast, and the placement of objects. A chef might alternate colors, stack ingredients in a specific way, or leave negative space—not as a requirement, but to make the meal feel more deliberate, balanced, and engaging.
In writing, the visual cues are more subtle—punctuations, line breaks, sentence length—but no less intentional. I tend to play with form and tension. Lines stretched longer or cut shorter, words rewritten for pace, then incessantly, again, for the aesthetic and metaphorical balance of the whole. For order, for flow, for ease, for fuck all, for the self.
Outside of literature, it is harder to mess with structure without breaking conventions and rules that define the discipline. But there is always room for play: a door left ajar, patterns woven into the mundane, and words unstated, lingering just off the page.
On beginnings
Chaos holds its own place in the creative process—particularly in writing—where order rarely reveals itself at first. Unlike the first stroke of a brush or the opening notes in music, the first words we scribe are more about possibilities than precision.
The getting there tends to be its own mystery. And it is only in moving forward that paths reveal themselves—bare and unadorned. Yet, as with all creative pursuits, there is a level of certainty that we must find to make progress—whether committing to a style, a medium, or a few choice words. The blank page, however, does not ask for perfection. To begin, it only asks you embrace ambiguity. A bargain, if so.
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