Last night I found this line in [amazon_link id=”B000HF7HJ0″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]A Circle of Quiet[/amazon_link] by Madeleine L’Engle. She is quoting Carl Van Vechten, who said, “An author doesn’t write with his mind, he writes with his hands.”

L’Engle goes on to say, “It is out of this world that poetry comes, and music, and sculpture, the tangible world of hard work, manual labor, of practicing finger exercises every day. As a storyteller my job is to tell a good story; to learn to do this so that I can, indeed, write “with my hands,” I must learn everything I can about structure and technique: I cannot neglect my practicing.”

I recently heard someone say they were going to ‘write’ a book by talking into a digital recorder that would, miracle of miracles, convert their speech to text and there they’d be…done; a book ready to be published.

But I don’t believe that talking is writing, any more than writing is talking. Writing is an altogether different function. It’s a bodily connection where consciousness?/intelligence?/muse? is made visible through the act of craft and rules and discipline.

It is not a verbal exchange, even though a reader and a writer enter into a conversation of sorts. But it is a more considered discussion, with contemplative time on each side to absorb and mull and think. Perhaps that’s what is so often lost in talking; the silences – considered silences.  Perhaps we could just shorten that, and call it consideration. Period.

I do this as much as anyone, always ready to jump and add my words to the fray. But it is rare, in those talkative moments, to fully articulate ideas and to really sit with the other person’s words; to share considered silences.

Writing, like gardening, is tending the words,  building the soil by reading and enriching and nourishing and creating the space for life and words to flourish. Writing strikes me as a very physical act, like laying bricks or blending oils on a canvas.

One should never underestimate the power of words and the influence of a good book. After all, Madeleine L’Engle is one of the reasons I knew I would marry my husband. How could I not? He told me that his favourite book as a child was [amazon_link id=”0739331787″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]A Wrinkle in Time.[/amazon_link] I  knew I’d found a kindred spirit.