“What is writing?” – Stephen King asks in his masterful book on the subject. “Writing is telepathy.”
He goes on to demonstrate with a beautiful example (shortened).
“Look- here’s a table covered with red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink-rimmed eyes. […] On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8. […] The most interesting thing here isn’t even the carrot-munching rabbit in the cage, but the number on its back. Not a six, not a four, not nineteen-point-five. It’s an eight. This is what we’re looking at, and we all see it. I didn’t tell you. You didn’t ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We’re not even in the same year together, let alone the same room… except we are together. We are close. We’re having a meeting of the minds. […] We’ve engaged in an act of telepathy. No mythy-mountain shit; real telepathy.”
We’ve all read works and posts by others that have spoken to us. Their thoughts seem to reach us at a time when we didn’t even know we needed them. We see the world they describe with clarity and relate to it.
Writing is telepathy.
