My mother likes to say that I leapt from her womb with an Olivetti manual typewriter, that I was writing and typing before I could walk. That's definitely a mother talking and remembering with a big dollop of hyperbole and metaphor. Which is to say that's her version. I'm sticking to mine.

I believe that writers are unique individuals who have always felt a kinship with words from whenever you first learned to hold a pencil and form letters. With the equivalent of your Mrs. Petrovsky standing beside your desk correcting the roll of your a's and o's and r's. Showing you how to connect letters. And then later taking you on that magic journey of all the things you could do with letters... once you learned things like sentence structure, subjects, verbs, predicates, and the once dreaded split infinitives.

My entirely subjective observation does not preclude those who came to writing at a later age from finding joy and/or gainful employment working with words. It means only that there must be a starting point in your intimacy with words in which you discovered a pull from them that connected you with them. Perhaps you didn't understand it at the time. Perhaps you were conflicted -- heck, you always wanted to be a doctor or physicist. How would words work for you there? Well, of course we know now with life's gifts of "experience" that words work in every field.

They are necessary to all forms of communication. Between you and, most importantly, your audience. They work in creative settings like poetry or prose, theater, and film. Equally as important are how words contribute to news articles, business proposals, grant requests, and good old email.

Without words, we might as well not have thumbs. WIthout thumbs, well, we'd require a good mic connected to our computer to translate our words onto the virtual block of space that is written onto our collective hard drives. And of course the requisite software program to make that translation happen.

Mostly, words work. As you increase your vocabulary, your command of how to push and pull, place, torque, tweak, hyphenate, and make up new words increases. Once you are confidant of your command of your interior compilation of all the words to be used in your piece, you must as a writer do so.

Writers do nothing if not write. Bette Davis the '40's actress star was once asked by a wannabe actor if she thought he should go into acting. As the legend goes, Bette said "Only go into acting if you must. It's too dam hard otherwise." I have to concur as it relates to writing and those who wish to ply their lives as wordsmiths.

Of course it depends who your audience is, too. If you're writing a journal, the writing is probably very personal and only meant to be seen by you and a few select others. The writing need not have much form. You don't need to adhere to the "rules" of grammar and syntax.

If your writing is intended for the masses (whoever they may be), you do need to place all those rules in some virtual drawer in your head. As you write, create, produce words, your mind will be exchanging infinitesimal particles of meaning, subjectivity, experience. Words will be roiling in your brain as they would if you were sipping and tasting a good wine -- letting it slide under your tongue, rolling over, breathe, letting the oaky or smooth liquid slip down the back of your throat.

This is where your box of rules applies. This is where you apply what you know to your words. Where you craft them. It's a step in the process of getting words to paper or words into your computer via your keyboard. This is how you create combinations of words that are intelligible to others (aka - your intended audience).

Thus it is that words work. Mostly. Sometimes. And usually.

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