Do you think that if your what you say could actually happen, and we could simultaneously access multiple pathways from one line of prose, these pathways would ultimately meet at a common place? That would be pretty amazing.

And, if they never meet, quite possibly that’s all the better.

I don’t know! That’s the point. We use writing to communicate a singular point, and I wonder if our penchant for pointed language limits us to understanding things.

What if you could simultaneously (and unambiguously) understand multiple view points in one line of prose? What would happen? Where could we go from there?

I cannot help but think of my favorite precise writer, Emily Dickinson. Her words were the birth of many of my ideas, but I am confident that they were not the same as her ideas. Arguably, that is the point of (reading) creative writing.

But beyond creative writing, and back to thoughts and ideas in general, would I ever want to hold the exact same ideas as anyone else? In fact, why would I ever need to communicate my exact thoughts to another person? Would I even want to understand another person’s thoughts exactly? What would that level of understanding get me?

But, I think we need to refine ideas because they make thoughts easier to communicate with writing, not because they necessarily need to be refined.

Why can’t we embed all of the angles in writing? Why do you include only what you ‘need’? Writing limits what you can communicate, and in its restrictiveness, it stifles creativity. (But, it does make writing more creative.)

I do also think that restriction can foster creativity, but that’s only if you embrace it.

This is why this post is filed under “thoughts” and not “declarations”.

The paradoxical thing about creativity is after you do something creative, it ceases being creative. Non-writing activities seem more creative than writing because there are only so many letters and words but essentially infinite gestures, colors, shapes etc.

I consider the writing process to be creative. I have an idea (or if it’s you were talking about, have many ideas at once), and then I work through the writing process to refine that idea. I roll it over, I look at it from different angles, I talk about it out-loud myself, and finally, when I’ve got what I want, I write it down in the most precise way I can. In other words, I go through the creative process, get the lesson I need to get from the subject, and then I write.

After all that, why would I need to revisit it? That’s like drawing up a house plan, pouring the foundation, building the frame, doing the finish work, and then afterwards, tearing it down and re-doing it. All for the sake of creativity? No. You just move onto the next house (and the next creative process).

That’s what makes sense to me.