Writing for writing's sake

SOME DAYS....

I try to write something every day. Indeed it's become something of a mild addiction. I've mentioned before the impact of the 750words.com site on my habits, and that motivation continues. Most of the time I'm content just to write what comes into my head. There's nothing very joined up about the process, so don't expect to see any lengthy works coming from my keyboard. It's all just done for enjoyment, and very occasionally that turns out to be something I think might be worth posting on this blog.

But some days the inner drive to turn out words is stronger than others. On those days it feels like there is a real physical need to sit down and watch the words flow on to the screen. They don't have to mean anything in particular, they don't have to tell a story or describe an incident, they don't even have to put forward an opinion or point of view. It's enough for them to be, to come into existence as sentences, paragraphs, a stream of thought which may or may not have any relevance to the outside world.

As addictions go, as urges go, this feels to be a healthy example of the species. Human beings have a need to communicate, to impart their thoughts to others. But there are times when the desire to say outruns the need for an audience. If a tree falls over in the woods, and there's nobody there, does it make a sound? In one sense yes, for the action will result in a disturbance in the air generating sound waves. In another, no, for what we recognise as sound is active, not passive, and it only becomes a sound if there is a means of perceiving it as such - like the human ear for instance. Without that receptor there are only sound waves, but no sound. It is the transforming ability of the ear which turns those waves into sound.

So if I write, and nobody reads it, is it still writing? Unlike sound, the written word has some degree of permanence. Even if nobody has read it the potential for someone to do so will exist, until the medium on which has been created ceases to exist.

Whilst the previous paragraph would have been unarguable a couple of hundred years ago, it has become obscured through the advance of technology. The advent of recorded sound means that sounds can, it seems, be heard more than once. Or can they? The recording is created from the soundwaves that were originally produced, but when reproduced the molecules of air are not the same as those from which the recording was made, and the ear which then turns those disturbances into actual sound is not the same as that which heard the noise being created live.

So what of writing? To read a sentence our eyes receive reflected light. As with the air molecules, the light is not the same for you as it is for me, the instruments of translating that light into images, our eyes, are not the same either. If this has always applied to the written word on paper, it was then changed by the invention of printing, and further revolutionised by the ability to store words digitally, in the form you are reading today. These words you see now are the same, in one sense, as those I type, but what you see has no real physical link to action of writing.

At the end of which I feel I've confused myself sufficiently not to be able to come to any sensible conclusion. The tree only makes a sound if someone, something, is there to create the sound from the air. My writing exists for as long as the relevant digital storage medium exists and there is a means to access it. It only makes a 'sound' if someone, which might only be myself, reads it.

But whether or not someone reads this there is still a purpose in creating it. It was fun to do so. Sometimes that all the purpose you need.