Words are my Friends

‘Words in the heart cannot be taken.‘ Terry Pratchett

Words are my friends, so I try to treat them with the utmost of care. With words I can talk and listen and share. I can advise and support and suggest. I can puzzle and question and wonder. Words can pick me up when I’m feeling down. They can make me smile and laugh and cry. Words help me figure out how I see the world, and they let me share that vision with others. They allow me to weave an idea, or a story, or an image, in a reader’s mind. Isn’t that amazing?

Words are my weapons, and they are powerful ones, so I must handle them with care. With words I can challenge and question. I can wind up or poke fun at. I can attack and cut and skewer. I can express fury, or distaste. I try my hardest not to use words to belittle or dismiss, to misrepresent or twist or upset. I don’t want to use words to exclude, to keep a closed shop. I want to be gentle and inclusive – to say ‘please come in and chat for a while, whoever you are’.

Words are strange, mystical things. They reside in the dictionary, doing no good or harm to anyone at all. And then a writer comes along and shapes them into something entirely new. The words you use leave an echo behind you. An imprint of you on the world. 

‘Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.‘ William Wordsworth