Thursday, July 11, 2013

The language of colors

I haven't had much time to write lately, and although I've had a couple of ideas, I haven't really had the time or the motivation to sit down and do anything with them.

The thing about writing is that it requires a lot more than just thinking of an idea and spilling it out into words. I am not one to labor over the precise words to use; generally, I just write in whatever voice is natural to me. Still, it often takes me so much effort to even put ideas into coherent sentences. Half the time I have a concept but not a plot, or a character but no driving force or flaw.

I have discovered that a lot of the time I don't think in words, which is probably what makes it so hard for me to translate my ideas into them. When people ask me to give me synonyms or ask what a word means, I often know exactly what it means and I will picture it or a response to it, but I will be absolutely incapable of explaining that to the other person. A lot of what I picture is color, especially in the context of music. My itunes playlists have titles like "blue-gray" "violet," and "jellybeans." I could not for the life of me explain to anyone else why I associate certain colors with certain songs, although there are a few general trends I could point out ("blue-gray" is mostly songs in minor keys, and "jellybeans" is very upbeat), but what makes something violet as opposed to blue-gray?

When I write, I have to channel all these grays and blues and greens into something that would make sense to anyone. It's a challenge, but when I finally get across what I meant to say, it's very fulfilling. It has taken me a while to learn how to say what I want to say without being to blunt about it; when I first started writing short stories, I wrote straight out exactly what my characters were doing/thinking/feeling  (that was before I knew about the golden "Show-not-tell" rule). I'd like to think I've improved since then, but I suppose old habits die hard because a lot of the time I just spit out what is happening instead of painting pictures and leaving gaps for the reader to color in.

I think writing these blog posts is a way for me to channel my thinking juices and get out of the completely analytical calculus-physics-chemistry routine that has become my day-to-day life. So even if no one is reading, at least I am writing, and that is enough.

No comments:

Post a Comment