Jeremiah Tolbert

Someone asked me the other day why I read books on writ­ing. I’ve been doing this for 10 years or so, so I should prob­a­bly have a han­dle on it, right?  Well, ignor­ing that last ques­tion, I had to think about it.  All I can really offer is this metaphor.

Our poten­tial as writ­ers to a cer­tain degree is locked inside of a box inside our minds.  One which we don’t inher­ently have the key for.  There are a lot of boxes, actu­ally, and a lot of keys.   A book on writ­ing is a new key that we can try on the boxes.  Sometimes, it opens one up, and we gain access to some­thing new, deeper, more profound.  

I’ve unlocked a few boxes in my time, but I have this sense that my head is like the ware­house at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  There are count­less boxes wait­ing in the back.  And so I keep try­ing keys on them.  Because they’re there, and I want to know what’s inside of them.

And so maybe this post will be a lit­tle key for you, if I’m really lucky.

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Tags: boxes and keys, My Writing, satori.