The Art of Second Thought

By Robert Ryan Valle

Get a pen and paper. 

Start writing about the first thing that comes to mind.

Stop after exactly one minute.

We were asked in class earlier today to do the same thing. I wrote about writing and came up with two sentences and a half. Others griped about not having enough time in an attempt to buy more thereof.

It was hard. Writing is hard. (You can’t imagine how much I am squeezing the words out right now.) But the exercise was harder because we didn’t have time to think. Or rather re-think. Up to this point I have edited the sentences above an average of three times.

Re-thinking is something we do everyday albeit quite later. We say and do things rashly without a care in the world (or for the whole damn world). And at the end of the day we realize how stupid we were. Replaying scenes in our heads. Imagining what we could have done better.

Writing gives us the chance to think and re-think. How many angry texts have you planned to send but opted to delete or edit instead?

We can check and re-check our spelling and grammar. We don’t have that luxury when we’re in a screaming match and thus risk sounding very stupid.

That’s why writing may be a measure of a person’s intellectual capacity (or at least it should be!)… which is what the exercise in class may have been for. I don’t think our professor wanted to see what we thought of the first instant but how we developed the first crazy sentence that came into our minds. Mine was:

What to write?

Now that I think of it I should have written a whole treatise on the craft. Or a six word story. Or a haiku. But it’s too late. I will be judged by the next words:

I remember the I have been writing for pleasure since early childhood. I remember

Maybe now my professor is thinking how weird a child I must have been (“writing for pleasure” sounds real sick now dunnit?). Or maybe how disorganized my thoughts are. Or how I’m still clinging to the past with all the remembering and talking about long ago. I’m no expert.

That’s why before actually writing a handwritten letter (it’s more personal me thinks), I type and re-type in a word processor. I end up sounding so smart.

And I never trust the spell check on these things. Because “pubic concern” won’t raise any flags for a spell checker but will most probably disturb most readers.

So give it a thought. Even a second thought.

(Ryan is a betel-quid chewing frustrated painter and guitarist. When he is not playing with his animal bone and teeth collection, he busies himself with rearranging his room.)