Looking Closely: Writing in an Image by Javan Petty

When I first looked at this image, it looked like just a simple sunset: bright colored clouds reaching across the sky, the reflection of the still, crystal water. But as I looked at it longer, the harder it became to tell the beginning and ending points of the sky and water. It's almost as if the end dissipated and the sky merged with the water.

That's equivalent to writing in my eyes. When we first begin writing that first draft, our

thoughts are bouncing off the walls of chaos just like the lines of orange and red across

the clouds. Ideas quickly pop into our heads and overlap with each other, and don't always

make sense. The first draft and sometimes even the second is like the sky, uncontrolled

and dramatic.

As we revise our work, that's when it turns out to be like the water. The water takes

in everything the sky feeds it. It reflects everywhere and calms the chaos above. If you were

to take away the water, the sunset would still be pretty, but wouldn't hold the same value.

Editing and rewriting are the same way; it creates this vision to look at it from a different

perspective, and it may be confusing at first, but if the writer continues to study it, it will all

come together.

The sun eventually falls below, but that glitter on the water still sticks around. Good writing

has that kind of glitter. After the words are all done and have been read, there's an image and a

reminder in the reader's head. Just like the connection of sky and water, reflecting is what

writing is about. It takes brainstorming, dispersed thought, and turns it into calm waters the reader will remember forever.