This week’s curated Idea of the Day comes from writer, George Saunders, in the form of a very short story. 392 words to be exact. A story entitled: Sticks.

Now, Saunders has already published an excellent breakdown of the writing process for this piece on his own Substack, which I will link HERE. And with that insight readily available, I felt it would be pointless to reiterate the same sentiments in a less skilled manner. So, the cosmic key provided for this idea today will be one of a more personal and reflective note to others of the past.

I first absorbed this short story in college; a time when I found my creative writing to be somewhat infuriating. There was always an abrasive disconnect between the way I thought and the words I wrote. And this stemmed from the core belief that if I just penned the unfiltered voice from inside my head, whether that be a voice of truth or one of fiction, I was somehow not really writing.

To be more specific, I think it was an instilled guilt, or a kind of worry that I needed to pass all of my raw thoughts through a more sane, polished, easily-digestible filter if I ever wanted to have a hope of being understood.

Undoubtedly, this was an intellectual war wound left over from school days of old. And I knew this. It was no great mystery. But even still, I found that just because I knew the problem’s root didn’t mean I could fix it. In fact, it more so just showed me how I’d never really cultivated the skill, or confidence, to free that authentic voice from within my head.

It was an act I always assumed would be easy, especially when institutional exams became a thing of the past. But no. As it turned out, it was more like I’d been clenching my fist for sixteen years and then, eventually, when I tried to open my palm and write from the heart, I found my muscles were frozen shut. As in, I could not do the easy thing, and just relax.

School was all about writing to make a clear point. A point that could be evaluated against an agreed upon standard. It was about being understood on a literal level. The person, the writer, did not seem to matter. Hence, we placed a number on the front of our exams and not our names.

But it was finding this story by George Saunders in the middle of his Tenth of December collection that zapped me awake to what creative writing can be when it’s operating at its highest function:

An exchange of consciousnesses.

It’s about being understood on an abstract emotional level, more so than it is about making any logical, easily understood point. It’s about knowing what doing the work means in this context, and how it has little to do with recalling, and almost everything to do with exploring.

It’s tied to your own inherent mystery. Your own way of thought. The unique sound of your soul. Sticks, the short story presented above, acted as a reminder to the twenty-one year old version of me that writing is an art form and words are its tools. You can play with them in the same way a painter can play with their colours, shapes, brushstrokes.

For instance, if you ever listen in to a conversation that’s truly humming, where the participants are communicating on a fully engaged level, it can sound almost like jibberish; a series of half words and head nods. And that’s because there’s something going on beyond the words. Beyond the rules. Some kind of energy or channel that’s being tuned into by two or more antennas. And writing can be this. It can capture shreds of this experience and shoot it out across a nation or even a globe in the form of a story.

I think what I’m trying to say is something obvious, but hard to act on. And that is, forming our writing in a specific way that echoes our raw internal voice sends out a beacon. Now, this beacon might appear to some readers as the mad scribblings of an insane asylum patient nicely stoned out of his fucking mind. Or. It could resonate with someone as being very similar to their own voice. A kindred spirit. Something they find to be so honest, so emotionally true, so hilarious, that it’s as if it was written specifically for them. And when something resonates in this way, when art does this, it is profound, it is inspiring, and it is magical.