A Thought on Writing

I found this thought via Tumblr (in all of my procrastinating awesomeness) and decided I wanted to share it with my blogging friends today.  I have to get back to my work (so close to crossing something off my list!), but enjoy the thought... and remember it well!

“Write about the wind tonight, your bright and terrified child, the intelligence of the darkness, the opacity of grief, the shape of her breast- because these are small, good things and they need to be witnessed. Write them because writing them reminds you and whoever may listen why we live at all. Write because it’s a practice the world seems to want and civility depends upon. Write to keep in practice for telling the truth. We may need people who are good at that; it seems to be going out of style. Write because it seems like a better thing to do, in every possible way, than blowing yourself or someone else up, then rioting on a beach, then dropping democracy on a middle eastern country from a B-52, or telling a bunch of lies and calling it politics or business. Write because, who knows, you may hear and speak a phrase which may save a life or change a mind or start a worth-while rumour. Write well and often because it is a way of playing the instrument each of us has been given, that voice of yours, of keeping it alive and humming. Write most quietly when the politics are shrill. Thats when quietness and calm and inconsequential beauty are most exquisitely needed. Give them to whoever may be listening. Give them back to the world, which gave them to you. Write because writing is a proof of civilisation. Someone had better do it and it might as well be you.”
— Mark Tredinnick, the little red writing book.

Happy Writing!