Into the Fire

Use them wisely. Mark Harbeson can tell you that even when you’re trying to be funny, sometimes it backfires. You mean no harm, but someone decides you’re being unkind, rude, mocking, or judgmental. You as a writer in this blogosphere might have been all of those but in reality you were pointing those words at yourself, not at others. Poof! Someone’s incensed, hurt, bothered, or outraged. Just like that. With only a few words.

Clarity with words: we writers are charged with that responsibility. The desire and ability to communicate purpose, emotions, feelings, intent, analysis, criticism, spiritual matters, insightful conclusions, personal revelations—any of it, all of it—becomes our duty to display, to say, to write, to communicate through story or fact-filled rhetoric. It’s what we do. And don’t do.

Words can burn up a screen, subdue a predator, convince an opponent, or woo a woman. Whatever we want them to do, we labor to make them perform in conjunction with our purpose for selecting them and their purpose to deliver the meaning of our efforts.

But words are fickle little monsters. They move and shift in people’s minds and can wind up turning against us with misinterpretations of our use of them. They gleefully display their chameleon tendencies when someone else decides we wrote something we didn’t mean to say. In fact we’re darn sure we didn’t even come close to their conclusions. No matter. We’ve done it now! And then we proceed to dig our way out of this mountain of youknowwhat because of those stinkin’ little words getting all twisted up in someone’s craw.

Unavoidable sometimes. Unpleasant most of the time.

The tools of our trade rise up and smack us, like getting hit with the backside of a shovel. It takes a minute to recover from the shock and then more than a few to allow the pain to pass. How did that happen?!

If you blog long enough, and if you venture into any kind of literary, political, spiritual, or let’s face it general opinion topics: Look Out! Words forget their place sometimes. They are designated to serve the writer, but oh how they love to tease the reader while causing said writer all kinds of discomfort, apology, grief, regret, or contrition.

Yet, we can’t escape them. We must press on with them, trying to form an alliance with them, sometimes wanting to beat them into submission, other times willing to sweet talk the little varmints into perfect expression. All the while they know how much control they have over us and over our readers. They sneer and snicker at our perplexity with them. And, as it turns out, we are usually the ones beaten into submission by their wicked cackling and assumed threats.

Those haunting, daunting, flaunting, taunting words . . . Use them wisely.

Or they’ll getcha!

Lord, help me to communicate what you’ve given me to write, to say, to know in my heart. I love you, Lord. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.