Madmutt’s Blog

I have of late been thinking about my desire to write. Why do want to post on my blog or add tweets to my Twitter feed? Why do I desire to write journal articles and even write books? I am certainly not very good at it. I am not a prolific blogger. You have to look to Fighting Monsters for that. I don’t how s/he has time for it, being a very busy social worker, AMHP, BIA and foster carer, but the posts are of good quality and thought provoking.

Someone said to me recently, that there could be an arrogance to writing. You have to believe that you have something worth saying. Sometimes when I read stories in The Daily Mail or The Sun about social workers, I wished that the journalists in question would have some self doubt and spared us all from their ill informed ramblings.

Anyway, back to the point, why write? When I read well written thought provoking pieces, it stimulates and shapes my thinking. Very few people develop in a vacuum. There are a few people that seem to be capable of developing original ideas apparently out of nowhere, but most people need others in order to bounce ideas around. If I am so inspired by the ideas of others, others may find my ideas interesting (or not). I find writing hard work, it takes time for my thoughts to come together and then they may not be all that coherent. I look at what others have written and say to myself I wish I could have written that or I could write like that. I clearly long to express myself in writing but I get frustrated at my lack of creativity. I do not come from a very creative family so I guess I could say that it is not in my genes. My partner disagrees with me there. He is always encouraging me to express myself creatively and gets hurt when in my frustration I lose my temper. But the drive to express something from within is so strong, however, I am not always sure what it is I am wanting to express. I seem to want whatever I create to be perfect first time and quickly get disillusioned if the creative process does not happen as smoothly as I think it should. I am too concerned about the end product rather than the process of creating it. The creative process has value in of itself. It is not justified by the quality of the end product. If this was the case, this year’s Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy would have looked very different and lacked a certain soul. It is often the case that the best motorbikes and cars are not the ones that are most efficient, it is the ones that are often flawed but designed and built with passion and soul.

The value of writing is not always in the quality of what is written, it is in the expression of something, some idea or thought which may spark off another thought or idea. Some may argue in the current age of reality television, celebrity, blogs and twitter feeds, people are saying far too much and that we all should shut up. I am not sure I want to hear any more about Jordon and Peter’s separation or see them slagging each other off on the front pages of the red tops. There are far more important things to report on in this world than this. Is the arrogance of these so called celebrities regaling us with the inane details of their lives, the same arrogance of wanting to write? I think not. What I am talking about is the expression of something, of sharing something that may be useful, something of value to others. The sharing of ideas and perspectives that can enrich. The putting of a point of view that can create understanding and mutual respect. The arrogance of writing has a certain humility. In writing you are not sure that you have anything interesting to say but you are saying it anyway. It is about making our society a better place. It is about improving the way we care for the vulnerable in our society. This is a world away from someone making lots of money by telling us what they had for breakfast!