December 2, 2024
This post is part of my 30in30 challenge, where I write 30 minutes every day for 30 working days. Due to my limited time for this challenge, the content will be only very lightly researched and edited. The idea is to just write. Find my voice, and find the courage to publish. To follow my curiosity wherever it may take me.
I'm still feeling the post-migraine effects of brain fog and the general inability to focus, so today will be a short one. Some days are like that—less about doing and more about letting the mind and body recover.
In moments like this, I often turn to the comfort of books, and Ian McEwan’s words comes to mind:
It’s a miracle, we take it entirely for granted, that someone can put symbols on a page and transfer the thoughts from their brain to another. Look at these shelves, stacked with pieces of other people’s minds, people long dead.
I also wrote in Thinking is horizontal but writing is vertical:
I firmly believe that every book contains a part of its author, and this is what I find fascinating. It's like having direct access to the author.
I didn't think I'd ever end up quoting myself, but here we are! (It feels a little odd, honestly, but also oddly fitting.)
Writing is magic—not the flashy, instant kind but a quiet alchemy that transforms thoughts into something eternal. I can’t stop marveling at the fact that we have access to the minds of others, across time and space, through the simple act of reading. Books are the closest thing we have to time travel and telepathy, aren’t they?
I'm currently reading Frankenstein, and this book is 205 years old. 205 years!
I'm holding a piece of Mary Shelley, and I cannot but wonder what she was thinking about as she was writing the story. What was her day like? The weather? Was she happy, or sad, or anything in between?
Writing is such a personal, vulnerable act, yet it becomes something universal the moment it’s shared. I often wonder what it would be like to see the first drafts of books—to witness how a chapter, a paragraph, or even a single sentence evolved. (By the way, a lot of Mary's handwritten notes were preserved and you can view them in the Shelly Godwin Archive.) By the time writing reaches the world, it’s been polished, revised, and carefully shaped. But what about the raw, messy beginnings?
Show me your drafts.
Let me take a peek into your unedited, unfiltered mind.
Today might be a short one, but it’s a reminder of the beauty of words, even when my own feel foggy.