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Have you ever read a book about short stories and poems and just felt your heart lighten itself or become heavy? That is the supreme power of the art of writing.
While nobody can deny the influence that a good piece of writing has on the mind, only a few acknowledge its true power and the beauty that comes along with it.
Whether it is a work of poetry, or prose, perhaps even just a simple line or two written hastily on a piece of paper, any form that writing takes has the potential and the ability to capture one’s heart and the moment it is trying to encapsulate and transform it in a way that it resonates with the reader and throughout time and space.
The art of writing, when executed well, can take readers across different time periods, places both fictional and real, and even provoke from their many different kinds of emotions. The best writing influences us throughout our lives.
Emotions through the Art of Writing
Perhaps the most brilliant aspect of writing is its profound and stunning capacity for eliciting emotional reactions from its readers. Have you ever read a book about short stories and poems and just felt your heart lighten itself or become heavy? That is the supreme power of the art of writing.
The written word is imbued with the power to subtly manipulate the myriad emotions that constantly cycle through the mind.
Simply from reading a marvelous novel alone, a person can find themselves walking the streets of another town that does not exist in reality, experiencing the joy, the pain, and everything in between that one character is being subjected to, as if the life we are reading about was our own. A poem can help us capture the essence of a moment, a memory or recount to us a commonplace experience in so few lines and in such a way that we are struck, asking ourselves, “Why didn’t I think of that?” and this realization follows us for very long.
Even just a crude letter of love from someone we love and know is written from the heart can pull on our heartstrings in a way that speaking out loud never could.
Reflecting through the Art of Writing
Yet writing is not just a tool to induce and expand emotions. It is also primarily a mode of communication. The primary goal of communication is to express oneself, and writing is perhaps the greatest tool we have in our arsenal, aside from speech itself.
Through writing, we have a wider playground to express ourselves. Writing is a great way to share your thoughts, emotions, and experiences with other people. Reading others’ writings is a wonderful way to connect with them more deeply. When compared to simply speaking, writing can potentially be more effective and transparent because writing is more of a deliberate act than attempting conversation.
The malleability and form of writing also make it both a personal and universal work. When an author pours out their experiences into pen and paper, they may at first think that they are just revealing themselves to a wider audience–but they are also uncovering the experiences and emotions of other people.
The greatest benefit that writing provides, save for a very efficient method of delivering and keeping information, is that it acts as a bridge between people’s minds. Humans are quite varied and differ from each other by quite a lot–writing serves as an excellent way of reaching out and making our experiences more known and understandable. It is through writing that we become closer as a community and as a species.
The Lasting Influence of the Art of Writing
But perhaps the most significant trait of writing is its distinct ability to endure. Where speech can be lost in time, the written word is fairly robust and long-lasting. A novel, a string of verses, or a love letter can endure and be copied, being re-read from generation to generation and meaning differently each time it is read. This is how wisdom persists because it is written down for new readers to come by it.
The art of writing transcends time and space, creating a network that connects readers from past, present, and future and everywhere across the face of this earth and perhaps beyond the stars.
Alex Writes 