“Wow, you’re good!”

A shrug, “It’s what I do.”

“I could never get into it like that. I never really liked writing.”

“Hm,” an obligatory noise, neither comforting nor disapproving; pure indifference oozing out of that single sound.

“I wish I knew what your trick was,” it was meant to be a lazy, offhand comment, but it was betrayed by the eager gleam in his eyes.

“You have to like writing. You can’t paint a masterpiece if you hate painting.”

***

“That’s beautiful.”

A warm smile, “I thought you’d like it.”

“How’d you do it?” more gleaming eyes.

“The words just wanted to be arranged that way,” aloofness slips back on like a glove.

“Oh,” furrowed brows and confusion, but no more questions.

***

“I like it,” small smiles of joy.

“I’m glad; I was thinking of you when I wrote it,” warm pride at a job well done.

“I could never make it sound so natural. What’s your secret?”

Disappointment floods my heart but vanishes quickly in the face of earnest curiosity. No gleaming. She just wants to know.

I lick my lips. “It’s hard to explain,” her face falls, something I don’t want to see on the first person who has asked me to explain as a writer instead of a cheat-sheet, “but I can try.” She’s pleased that she’ll get an answer, and I’m pleased that I have not yet upset my audience.

“Look over there and tell me what you see.”

“I see a tree.”

“And?”

“Some grass. Why; what do you see?” Wrinkled brows look up at me and I feel a little pressured to make this sound important; to try to say it the way I would write it. I know it won’t sound the same though.

“I see opportunity, and a thousand golden ideas flashing in my mind. It’s not just a tree and some grass. That’s Vakala, the oldest and grandest of all ancient willows.” She wants to understand, but I can tell it made no sense to her. I take a deep breath and think of another angle from which to approach this. “Do you see that man over there?” Average looking man in jeans and a sweatshirt.

“Yes.”

“What if everyday he goes home and plans how to rob a Swiss bank?”

“That’s absurd!”

“No, that’s creative. You see, writing is all about stripping away the veneer of what is plainly visible, and replacing it with the fine embroidered draperies of dreams and imagination.”

“So it’s all about lying to sound good?” Her frustration at not understanding is a mere tenth of my own at not being able to describe it properly.

“No… It’s more like trying to see even the vaguest of all possibilities, and building your own world with it. I mean, what sounds better to you, ‘The night sky was beautiful,’ or ‘The night sky was beautiful with its velvet, inky blackness and diamond bright stars?’”

“The second one.”

“But what if it was written in a city, where the stars are anything but bright? It isn’t a lie; it’s taking something’s potential and slowly coaxing it out with description.”

“Do you ever see the world as it is, or only as you want to?”

“I’d rather have my ‘dark and stormy night’ than your ‘tree with some grass.’ It makes life so much more interesting.”

“But it’s a lie!”

“No, just a different way of seeing things.”

She shakes her head and wanders off dejectedly. Maybe my way of seeing is too different, and maybe no one else will understand it, but despite the frustration it may cause I wasn’t lying when I said that I didn’t want just ‘a tree with some grass.’ There’s so much more to life than that.