The Beginning

There is a fine yet mile-long line between being an aspiring writer and an aspiring author — one that takes great effort to cross. In this day and age, it’s easier than ever to pick up a pen or open a blank document and let the magic in your mind etch itself into the physical world, but giving it home within an audience is a harrowing task. Not every writer has the privilege of becoming an author, whether that be due to lack of skill, materials, or luck. Despite any setbacks, though, there is one thing that can never be held back by this modern literary hierarchy: creativity.

As long as universes brew at your fingertips, as long as dauntless words keep you awake, as long as sudden revelations send chills up your spine, your art will keep you planted on the edge of that fateful line.

And of course, writing is art, how could it not be? It’s a form of expression untainted by judgement, allowing the release of oneself onto a blank slate. Imagination plays a huge role, too, offering the exercise of creativity with every page and scene. But I think there’s another comparison to be made, and this one strikes me as something often overlooked.

Writing could very well be visual art. Of course, this point seems obvious if looked at from the perspective of a sculpture made from printed pages or merely the sight of letters forming code, but that’s not exactly what I mean. Writing, in the purest form of the medium, is at its core intensely visual in what it represents.

The work of a writer allows for an experience more personal than anything else. We read their gift and float away to worlds unseen — worlds unknown! — with sights and ties unique to every one of us. Words on a page turn into vivid dreams with the flick of an eye, painting landscapes and portraits grander than those on a canvas. The act of writing is the transfer of art from the mind to a sheet of paper, yet the looseleaf always fails as confinement. It acts merely as a placeholder for speech, able to reach millions with its silence. Writing is visual art in the way it lets you come up with your own truth. It’s visual art in the way it veils what the author could’ve seen while typing out their personal magnificence. Most importantly, it’s visual art in the way it leaves you with the vision of a world so foreign yet so familiar, so untouchable yet so yours.

You will never know what the author wanted you to see, nor will you know what they themselves saw. All they can do is offer you a piece of themselves and grace you with the opportunity to make your own vision — one that is as individual as a fingerprint.

An author has the power to generate vast seas of visions, captivating our hearts even long after their hands no longer write and lungs no longer breathe. That being said, an unpublished writer has the potential to leave the same mark on the world, all it takes is determination and perseverance.

What keeps me moving is the fact that I, like anyone, have the capability to be this visual artist. My art buried itself into the very fibre of my being, ideas of strange worlds rivalling the cosmos in their ethereality. What a dream it is, to be able to share these intricate pathways, to feel the pride of your creation taking form behind someone’s eyes. Perhaps one day I’ll see this hope through, whether in minute numbers or on a global scale. As my sandcastles grow taller, maybe so do my feet grow closer to crossing that threshold between two similarities. For now, though, I doubt technicalities matter.

I may not be an author, but I’ll be damned if I’m not a writer.