All Those Words…

“All those words bottled up for decades, oak-aged and waiting to be decanted.”

– The Christmas Murder Game, Alexandra Benedict

Why I chose this quote

It’s that time of year when people spend more time together. The festive season brings old emotions back to the fore. Which can spark arguments. Or leave us feeling guilty or frustrated. If we don’t say what we want to say now, it could remain a nagging thought until it’s too late for anything to change for the better. As happens in this story.

Keeping things bottled up is never a good idea. You don’t want to end up bumping off all your relations in an isolated country house now, do you?

That said, if there’s anything you’d like to get off your chest this Christmas, I’d encourage you to prepare for it like an author. Draft, revise, and edit, before your words reach their audience. Think about how you would like your thoughts to be received.

If those thoughts have been hanging around for a long time, it’s worth taking just a few more minutes to make sure they’re ready to be released into the wild. After all, Christmas is a good time to be kind. Both to yourself and others.

What this quote means to me

As an author, it’s the time perspective of this quote that speaks to me. And it’s a really hopeful message. Authors write first drafts and then take years to polish them into final versions. Or we don’t even attempt the draft yet because we know we aren’t quite ready for it. But eventually, we achieve our goals. And the time we take is often what makes our work special.

There is room in the writing arena for authors of all ages. Experiences aren’t spread evenly throughout our lives. So there are young people with something important to write about. But there are also many older authors achieving great things based on the experience and wisdom of decades. It really is a career with no age limit.

It’s just a case of writing something when you have something worth writing. And then taking however long it takes to make it something worth reading.

That’s what this quote means to me. What does it mean to you?