Muggle Magic

For me, writing is natural.  When I sit down and get into the groove, my fingers whiz across the keyboard, moving so nimbly as to call comparisons to time-elapse photographs or Dash from "The Incredibles."  On more than one occasion I have astonished myself with the words on the page in front of me.  The ideas flow from a place so deep inside, I am not even cognizant of the idea's arrival until I read my work. 

Surely this is the peculiar experience that led to the belief in the Muses so long ago.  As much as I would like to, I cannot take responsibility for these strokes of creativity, so I give it up to a higher power.  (And yet, I have no problem taking responsibility for the writer's block that comes as frequently as the textbook Csikszentmihalyi flow state.) 

But this remarkable feeling of other worldliness, however electrifying, is not the only reason I want to make a career out of writing.  I want to be a writer because I believe in the words of Albus Dumbledore who said that "words are our most inexhaustible source of magic."  This is illustrated scientifically in studies carried out by Philip Davis of the University of Liverpool, whose team analyzed the chemical processes carried out by the brain in Shakespeare's writing. 

The je ne sais quoi of arguably the greatest writer in history can be summed up, much less romantically, as filled with "moments of grammatical ambiguity but semantic revelation." When we mere mortals read works by the Bard, our brain reacts almost simultaneously with confusion and understanding.  The juxtaposition of these two feelings gives us pleasure, visible on an EEG scan, and on our faces.

But this magic is also illustrated qualitatively in the things, both good and bad, that words do on a daily basis.  Everything from carefully crafted phrases that stick with us for years ("if it doesn't fit, you must acquit") and slimy requests that still needle us today ("define what 'is' is"), to words that unite us ("ask not what your country can do for you. . .") and make us look inside ourselves ("I have a dream"). 

In the end, writing is a way to find and spread truth, love, hope, and all the other intangibles that are the hallmarks of humanity.