Tangents
Published May 24th, 2009 | 
I was out walking earlier — a daily ritual that is usually a peaceful, meditative period in my day. Unfortunately, this afternoon, I found myself bombarded with random thoughts and worries. Will my forthcoming check-up with my oncologist go well? Did I pay that bill? Do I have enough money in the bank to pay that bill? Should I upgrade my notebook memory? Etcetera and so on . . . . Then, I was thinking about a recent freelance assignment I’d just completed — some content for a travel website. I thought about the notation that came with the assignment: “Stay on-topic. Don’t go off on tangents.” What I concluded, on the way back from my walk is that this is just about as precise a definition of what good writing is (or should be) as I’ve found. See, life is all about those tangents — gooey, messy strands of things. No matter how much you plan and plot out your life, the tangents will get you every time, either willingly or dragging your ass kicking and screaming all the way. But writing isn’t life, no matter how much some writers like to pretend it is. It’s artifice. It’s order imposed on the chaos of language. It’s the weeding-out of all the tangents. That’s right. Words are like cars on the highway and writers are the traffic cops. Writing is taming the shrew . . . and lions and tigers and bears . . . and rabid dogs and . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
What was I saying?
