Have you ever looked up at a skyscraper and witnessed the nearly imperceptible swaying of the building? Or have you ever been up in a building and stood still, closed your eyes and felt the swaying beneath your feet? Yet, at the base of those buildings there is no movement. It’s such a strange illustration of how things work in so many facets of life. A strong foundation is necessary to build upon, but rigidity must give way as we work our way up to loftier heights. Simultaneously, it must never become too flexible or else it will be unsafe for anyone inside and the building will collapse.
It’s a fairly obvious metaphor about writing. The rigid base would be the language in which you write, for me that’s English. As you build up the way you use this language can’t stay the same or it won’t support what you’re building up. Reaching higher means more mess with language. Moving words from front to back, forward, inside out, twisting and turning until it sways in the breeze. Too much give, however, and it will lie limply across the earth, going far one way or the other, but never as high as you desire.
There will be some that will argue that plenty of people stick with a basic use of the language, using the rigid rules of grammar and standard words. Those people build pyramids with broad points that become narrow at the top, with little space inside for the reader to explore. On the inverse, there are some that would say that there are those that float up in the breeze. I’d accuse these of attaching kites to their top to keep themselves afloat. Inside, the reader will never fully feel comfortable or as though they understand what their reading. Going further can scare the reader, or seem unwise. It also depends on the winds generated by the topics therein. When those topics cease being as important, the story will fall. That said, both those extremes have classic works. Works can defy our expectations, but our expectations are there to show us that those are the exceptions not the rules, and it can be hard to find a good median.
The way I’m going to challenge everyone to shift that is to simply look through their daily interactions. We all make mistakes at some point when we write to people. We live in a world where the fastest form of communication is writing. As you go about your day, when you make a mistake in writing, correct yourself but not in the way that you were originally going to correct yourself. Shift it and change it to mean the same thing said in a different way. You’ll find yourself thinking of the same old words with a different flair that will become unique to your writing.
A Daily Dose of Zach 