Sleight of hand

We take something simple. Something ordinary. Something as common as words. As rudimentary as paper and pens. And we turn it into something else. A white rabbit that leads to deeper mystery. The hidden place inside a wardrobe. A doorway to a different world. The tollbooth to another land. A tesseract folding time and space. A yellow-brick road. Voila, like it's nothing.

Writing is a performance art, a trick of the light, a clever deception, a kind of sleight of hand. Alakazam, like it's nothing.

Writing is magical.

It's a prestidigitation, a conjuring that asks you to come along, to look intently, to watch closely. Is this your card? The one with your signature on it? The one you picked yourself? The one meant for you. It's an invitation to wonder. To notice the moment when reality as you've always known it disappears. To see the impossible come into view. Abracadabra, like it's nothing.

Writing is magical. But, do we understand what that means?

“When people said something worked like magic", Lev Grossman explains, "they meant that it cost nothing". That it arrived without effort, as if pulled from a hat, as if out of thin air. Open sesame. But that isn't the truth. That isn't what magic is. That isn't how writing works. Like any skill or craft, it's long and laborious. "[G]rim and repetitive". Practice and discipline. It's working before the world's awake, and after everyone has gone to sleep. It's doing it every day until it's finished, and then repeating the process over and over and over again. Another chance, another draft, another try. Sim sala bim, like it's nothing, like it costs you everything.

Writing is magical not because its transcendent or from another world. Not because it comes from out of nowhere without stress, toil, or strain. But because it's really fucking hard. And when you do it right. When you nail it. When you lose yourself in it. When you hide it all up your sleeve; all the heartache, all the wires, all the trap doors, all the strings. It feels like it was easy, like Hopus-Pocus, like it was nothing.

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