Writing Is Like Breathing · 10 May 2025
Writing is like breathing.
I have said, “Writing is like breathing,” many times in my blog posts. I even said once that I wrote about it. (Creativity on the Internet) But I have looked on my blog and I have never said more than a paragraph about why writing is like breathing. So I figured I ought to fix that.
We all know that we need to breathe to live. Our lungs fill with air, the oxygen in the air gets absorbed into our blood cells, which circulate through our body and give said oxygen to our other cells. Those same blood cells gather up carbon dioxide from said other cells and take it back to our lungs, where it somehow gets put back into gaseous form so our lungs can expel it out into the atmosphere. It is an intricate and beautiful process that can get fouled up by all sorts of complications, usually that we bring about by ourselves. (But that is another story.)
That process is similar to what writing is like for me.
Somehow there are ideas floating around in the universe. I like to think of it as The (Idea) Ether (which I did write about a few years ago). Ideas float around in that ether and all we need to do is capture them. And write them down. Writing them down is the key. And that is how writing is like breathing.
Let me explain.
Ideas float around in the Idea Ether (like the oxygen in the air). I somehow breathe in those ideas and they float around in my head (like the air going into my lungs). I then write down said ideas (like the transfer of oxygen to my cells), then they are mine. However, if I do not write down said ideas, they leak out of my mind and go back into the ether (like carbon dioxide going back to the lungs and then back into the surrounding air). Which is a shame. Unless, of course, I somehow breathe in the idea again.
If I use the ideas, they go out of my mind through a different path. They go out of my fingers onto the computer (or onto the page) and eventually, hopefully, go out into the real universe as a blog post, poem, book, song, video, or some other form of creation (again, like breathing out).
This other path is the preferred path. After all, I hate giving my ideas back to the ether. I hate losing ideas. Which does not happen much anymore. Or maybe it happens just as often as it used to, I just do not notice it as much. Ah well.
At any rate.
I truly look at writing as both a gift and as a necessary part of my life. For even though I could technically survive without writing, it is still like breathing to me. I still need to gather ideas from the ether, get them from my mind to the computer, and transfer them from my computer to the internet or the printed page (or both). It is a process like breathing. At least for me.
And now I am happy. I have finally written about why writing is like breathing.
© 2025 Michael T. Miyoshi
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