Yesterday, I was thinking about writing and the invisible weight of responsibility attached to it. When I read a ‘perfect’ paragraph (ignoring the infinite, structural connotations the word perfect attaches to itself), I instantly have an image in my head. There is the writer and there is the perfect, beautiful, clear-cut, flawless thought in their head which they note down. There is the pen and there is the paper, the laptop and the writer. Always the writer. 

But I imagine there must be absolutely no doubt or discourse in their writing process on where the comma should be, or whether it should have been a semicolon instead. It must be just the most beguiling thing ever, to translate the alphabets, letters, words, paragraphs as intended, mind to paper, like nature’s printing press. My brain must be the most incoherent thing ever. 

To put myself at ease I am lying to myself, reality is not built this way and I have only given verisimilitude to this simulated perfection. Who knows?  In this newly built real world which now exists outside my head (which will now concur with my writing ineptitudes), writers no more have methodical and clear thoughts. One is here and the other is there and maybe, after a few days, they will manage to gather them. Later on they will make it into something resembling coherence, and maybe, after an embarrassing amount of time has passed, it will look a little bit like the original paragraph we talked about. And finally, during editing it might get cut out entirely. If not, it will be the perfection we talked about. 

Of course the writer would still not appear to be outwardly satisfied with perfection. Secretly they could be the most pleased with their printing press, but cannot show that, as it would mean they approve of the writing. And self approval is plain unpleasant. 

Now, this paragraph, these four lines of chomskyan beauty that I will have produced will be forever attached to me, and I to them. I cannot detach myself from it ever. This ordeal I went through, this mammoth task, will only be justified if I put it out there and make it real. Publishing entails responsibility, but is anyone ever wholly prepared for that?