Imagine the time when our ancestors began to put symbols and pictures together to form written language.  What a humbling but empowering experience that must have been; to be able to name not only the physical world we could see, touch, smell, taste and hear but also the spiritual world that we could not detect with our senses.  And back then, thousands of years ago, when the world was full of the hidden meaning of things, being able to name the known and the unknown must have given our ancestors a badly needed sense of comfort in a world of overwhelming danger.

I think for the modern writer it’s much the same.  We don’t have as many immediate

unknowns as our ancestors but the world is still a very dangerous place.

Written language allows us a small measure of comfort because we can name many of the things we fear and those things that still give us hope.