[spaces] – Flying Like Writing

Posted by Michael Biornstad on Feb 8, 2012 in Academy | 0 comments

The iPod was invented in 2001, the cell phone in 1973, and the first powered airplane in 1903. Powered flight is over one hundred years old, and yet I am still enamored by it, in a way that I am not by the others. I love to fly. If I do not get a window seat, I will peer awkwardly over the body of the person sitting next to me, ignoring all social and spatial boundaries.

Take-off is the most exhilarating moment of the flight. As the sound of the jet engine grows louder and the plane rushes down the runway, I sit back, allowing my shoulders to be forced into the seat by the g-force, while my stomach lurches into my chest. The horizon line shifts, as the wheels of the plane leave the asphalt and lift skyward. At times, writing, either creatively or academically, is like the moment of take-off. But most of the time, it’s not.

On one occasion, I boarded a plane, leaving my home country behind. I was bound for a new life in England. I did not know what lay on the other side of my transitory flight, but I knew that in going, I was reshaping my life. Writing can offer a transition, in which we begin with the familiar, and discover the unfamiliar and the foreign. But most of the time this does not happen either.

Some writers write with grace and eloquence, their words soaring up into the ionosphere. Most of us just taxi down a runway. There is little magic to the art and act of writing. Like any other discipline, it is a matter of practice and perseverance. When I write, I then reread, reword and rewrite. Undoubtedly there are times of slogging through the mire of comma splices, and un-parallel sentence structures, but the moment of finding the perfect word, phrase or paragraph makes it worthwhile. It is the moment of take-off.

Jessica Lamb