That Flash of Delight

Writing is a slow-going effort. It’s a solitary and troublesome venture. What keeps a writer coming back to his chair day after day? There are as many motivations as there are writers. Some motivations are pure, some impure. Hopefully no one is seeking personal gain through writing. There are much more efficient paths than this scribbling of words. For most of us, the love of reading drove us to join the ranks of writers—a desire to be both a maker of stories AND a receiver of their gifts.

For this writer, and for others I know, a central joy of the craft is that moment when a realization is made about a work in progress. A connection within the story leaps off the page and you see a facet you’ve never seen before. It’s that moment when you, as your first reader, have a realization about the story and it takes on a life separate from your effort.

Earlier this month while researching and writing about the Passion, I spotted a parallel between the water being made into wine at the wedding in Cana and the moment at the crucifixion when wine is offered from the tip of a spear and moments later that same spear releases water from the side of the dying Messiah. All at once, the Good Friday narrative had another facet and gleamed more brightly than before.

I imagine this is what the detective feels when an unnoticed fact suddenly slips into place and transforms into a clue. Or when a patient reveals a close-held detail and the psychologist finds there was a hole in her understanding the shape of that very reveal. Or when a medical researcher is planning yet another protocol in a long-fought effort to treat a rare disease and spots a thread in the data that has slipped all previous notice.

Writers are not alone. It’s a universal of all crafts, of all pursuits. As it turns out, all of us crave that flash of delight.