Write Right Rite

The written word means a lot to me. It's deliberate, it requires more effort than letting a thought tumble out of your mouth. It's humanity's primary means of archiving knowledge. It's moved from paintings on cave walls to hieroglyphs to monks at copying tables to printing presses to the internet.

The framers of the US Constitution thought so much of it that they made one of the first things they guaranteed a right to. The Supreme Court has consistently upheld the right to write, even when what a person wrote wasn't right.

Writing is also a rite unto itself. It's a sacred act declaring that this idea is worth committing to physical form. Man cannot commit his word directly into a physical reality like God, but man has a sense that his words are somehow precious.

There have been times when my words were my world. Right or wrong, there are times when my characters are more important to me than people I meet on the street. The act of writing involves some investment of one's self. I guess that's true, but I think it's even more of an act of empathy; it's really feeling what that person you're writing about feels. That's true of a good journalist, an editorialist, or a fiction writer. People that understand how their subjects feel write big, fat, effective pieces. People that can't get out of their own head write thin, brittle pieces that collapse on themselves or under the lightest breeze.

I just resigned my "position" as the hockey editor of a site run by a friend of mine. I find myself wandering around, nowhere to publish but the web, and unsure of where to go next. Wherever it is, it will need to be somewhere where people value writing. They will need to be able to put themselves in my shoes, and they will need to know what "write, right, rite" means.