Eyewitness to a genesis

Creation on display

Each character’s development

With fingertips we splay

Cross section of one’s soul and heart

Dissected, quill cuts page

Inked imagination’s lark

Sings, locked in parchment’s cage

Should writing meet its death as art

It’s scarcity we’ll praise

For whence the spirit’s breath departs

The body soon decays

I am alive.

I feel my pulse shatter my chest and my lungs beat

even when I tell them to stop moving.

I scream for the blood in my veins to exit.

I beg for death.

But I am alive.

Just like writing.

The day writing dies so will I

and I will embrace the Grim Reaper with open arms.

For a world without writing is a world without hope.

Hope has been around this long, ever since Pandora's box,

I don't think it will leave now.

As long as I keep churning these words, writing will not die.

It may suffer, it may fade.

But I will not let it die.

Reading this prompt, I felt an overwhelming sense to cry. From toddler to young adult, thousands of pages are filled with my written words. All the emotions of a young girl who has suckled off the world of drugs, has lost her other half, and was abandoned not by chance but by necessity backs these words. As grave and bold as it is to say, I would not be alive without writing. So I will always write, even if the world stopped writing.

Writing is to tell a story, to have expression. A human without expression is inhuman.

My fav'rite book, The Giving Tree,

I've loved for forty years.

Our Uncle Shelby wrote it, see;

his message a frontier.

My mind developed alongside

his stories and his rhymes,

and since his death I've pined for lines

of wisdom that he chimed.

If such a thing was possible,

I'd have a pint or two

and probe his ghost for suitable

advice to get me through...

'Cause probably I've got some time,

for I've not reached my prime-

and I would love to make that climb

refined by his design.

How does one write?

Paint a cavern wall?

Etch into a stone?

Dip a quill?

Compose a symphony?

Stage a play?

Trace the sand?

Screech the chalk?

Sharpen a pencil?

Return the carriage?

Click a Bic?

Finger the keys?

Tap the screen?

Script a movie?

Mark your skin?

Print a shirt?

Thumb a text?

Post a comment?

Ask AI?

Has writing died? Evolved? Expanded?

Is it a lost art? You tell me.

I wrote this a while back ( I may have shared it before?). It is appropriate now as I think it proves your point.

:)

Express Myself

I thought I might be good at writing poems

Then realised it’s quite hard to make things rhyme

And getting into something like a rhythm

Isn’t always easy to do and sometimes takes a lot of time to get right.

I thought I might be better at writing free verse

Then realised it’s hard and actually I am worse at it.

Besides, I don’t know what it actually is

So perhaps I’ll find some other kind of way to express myself.

I thought a Limerick might be the way

Like the one about a fella from Kent

Whose nose was unusually crooked

It curved at the end

So he could smell round the bend

And he soon got to know every smell.

I thought this would make me seem clever

But now I wish that I had never

Imagined it would be such fun

Because it’s not.

i have been told that writing is stupid

pointless

worthless

i could do better

but i could do worse

y'know, i used to believe

that i was stupid

pointless

worthless

but then i started to write

i've written a bit, i would say

not a lot, though

but i've wanted to die

and i've wanted to live

writing has brought me everything

love, God, heartbreak, sadness, death,

everything

just as reading has.

but, writing. it isn't worthless.

it's an art, but i don't believe it's one that's dying.

some writing can make your blood go cold

can make it boil

some can make you laugh out loud

others can make you cry

writing.

i don't really care if it's worthless to you.

it's something i wouldn't give up.

but you can, if you want.

it's your choice.

i'm just telling you what it's done for me.

If writing is a dying, worthless art, then I'd go as far to say that everything derivative of traditional pen-and-paper writing is just as meaningless. The art of writing persists because we have no other way of interacting with each other. Two of the biggest forms of media that still dominate our culture, movies and music, is entirely dependent on good writing, and both persist when they possess good quality writing. The longer they persist, the more impactful they are on our culture and the more easily we're able to express ourselves. Expression is really what writing is powered by, after all. Frankly, if writing was dead, so we would be too.

You can't replicate the experience of reading the poetry, the words used, the flow of the poem and rhyming (if there is rhyming) is unique to the art. Something like a Shakespearean sonnet is unique in poetry in comparison with Tv and movies. Plenty of films fail to capture the feel and story of a novel. Reading is an active form of a hobby and forces you to focus on the words, themes, structure etc. of the text, gain pleasure from the clever usage of words as well as the characters and the story they are part of. So no writing is not worthless, dying? Not sure because people still buy books fiction or no fiction. Poetry is far less popular than for example during the Romantic Period or Victorian Period but some people still have an interest in it(like me and the people on this site). Hell I’m part of a poetry club at my uni, there are at least 15 to 20 people which is a lot people for clubs at my uni. So there is still active interest in writing from what I have seen in my life.

Now, how do you define the worth of art?

I don't even know which writing you are referring as - creative, academic, content...

We as writers are artists. If worthiness of art is proportional to its commercial success than more than 95% of it is worthless.

Just one per cent of artists achieve success in their life, even the great ones like Vincent van Gogh, were not successful in their lifetime. Did their art become unworthy?

No, as art has very subjective relevance to people.

If right now you are going through nonsuccess, (I will not use the word 'failure') then you need not give up.

For people like me, writing is the only thing that delights, takes the stress away, and is cathartic.

If writing is not doing that to you then, maybe, it is not for you.