It's time to bite the bullet and admit it: writing, as a profession, has gone to the dogs. It's a sad realization, but no one seems to value the art behind the written word anymore. We live in a 140-character kind of world; a world where how quickly information gets to you is more valuable than how it is written. While that's a shame, I should have seen it coming. I've seen "The Terminator." I've seen "I, Robot." I knew that, in the future, computers would royally screw a good portion of the workforce out of steady jobs.
I guess my naiveté forced me to turn the other cheek, because the written word, when constructed carefully, has the ability to change lives. It requires a real, feeling, living human brain to mate words that birth novels. It requires empathy and patience...virtue and wit. Everything that goes into the construction of a piece of writing is so raw and real. From deciding on the right synonym to the perfect placement of an ellipses...every choice tells a story.
A semicolon gives the reader free will; the ability to read on when he or she is ready.
An exclamation point awakens the reader and excites his or her brain by providing a natural high!
A period is sure. It provides the reader with a firm foundation.
Every dot...
Every dash -
Every declaration offers substance.
I'm not good at a lot of things. I have the mathematical prowess of a ten-year-old prepubescent and the economic sense to match. I can't juggle. I don't know how to properly assemble furniture. I'm a messy eater and holiday commercials make me cry. I might not be able to drink a glass of Chardonnay without spilling on myself, but I can tell the difference between a spondee and a dactyl. "The Odyssey" is one of my guilty pleasures and I firmly believe that Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" is one of the strangest yet most eye-opening pieces of literature that one can read.
It's disheartening to think that the very thing that I love is slowly being stripped away in today's culture. When did we stop caring about words? When did they stop being important to us? When did grammar become a nuisance and spelling an inconvenience?
While actions may speak louder than words, it's those words that inspire actions;
and they deserve more than a blue bird and a hashtag.