End, then begin.

Now that I’m fully engulfed in my MFA program, I tend to think about things in relation to writing–words, structure, form, punctuation, beginnings, middles, and ends.

Any piece of writing is structured with a beginning, middle and end, (moderate exceptions apply.) To create anything begins with an idea. With those ideas, we bring with them, everything inside of us–the lens in which we view the world, our past, our feelings, our prejudices, and our fears.

Idea.

Sometimes that idea starts with a beginning, sometimes an end, but no matter in what order we imagine it or even write it, the end result is linear. We begin, we have a middle, and we end.

A sentence begins with a word and ends with a symbol of punctuation. A sentence must first end before the next sentence can begin. A paragraph begins with an arrangement of sentences; the last sentence ends before the next paragraph begins and new chapter can’t begin until the last one has closed.

Life is like a piece of writing; it mirrors it in many ways because writing is the expression of life; it’s the articulation of ideas, thoughts and emotions in a way that can’t come from simple speech.

Life is like a piece of writing; it has a beginning, middle, and end–but unlike a piece of writing, we never know when one chapter ends and the other begins and we also don’t know when we’ve come to the end until we do. Sometimes we think we can figure out the plot, the prose, the structure and the form–sometimes we know what’s going to happen and sometimes we do not, but one thing is certain–we can’t skip steps–we can’t flip to the end to see how everything turns out. The book of life has no certainties, no guarantees of happy endings, and can change in a moments notice.

I am trying to put a period at the end of a sentence, and somehow I need to figure out how to do that before I can form the next sentence of the next paragraph of the next chapter. But first I need to find that period

About these ads