If I were to show you a picture that would offer the
slightest hint of how I feel sometimes as a writer it would look like this…
I came across this tree not far from my house while
out walking yesterday. Immediately I was struck by the wonder of a tree growing
inside a tree. At the same time, it made perfect sense.
The following quote from Sharon Draper’s Out of My
Mind does a nice job capturing the sentiment this tree conjures in me.
From the time I was really little—maybe
just a few months old—words were like sweet, liquid gifts, and I drank them
like lemonade. I could almost taste them. They made my jumbled thoughts and
feelings have substance. My parents have always blanketed me with conversation.
They chattered and babbled. They verbalized and vocalized. My father sang to
me. My mother whispered her strength into my ear.
Every word my parents spoke to me or about me I absorbed and kept and remembered. All of them.
I have no idea how I untangled the complicated process of words and thought, but it happened quickly and naturally. By the time I was two, all my memories had words, and all my words had meanings.
But only in my head.
Every word my parents spoke to me or about me I absorbed and kept and remembered. All of them.
I have no idea how I untangled the complicated process of words and thought, but it happened quickly and naturally. By the time I was two, all my memories had words, and all my words had meanings.
But only in my head.
~~~
That is until the writer in me was born.
That’s how I’d finish the quote.
What does this photo make you think of?
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