Atonement

I recently finished Ewan McIntyre's Atonement and stirred not only emotions around the characters, but my own overactive imagination as well. Atonement is a fascinated book about a young girl spying an incident between her older sister and their help’s son and her imagination taking the scenario well out of proportion. Her own impression based on this brief moment leads her to accuse the boy of a rape that occurs shortly later. The rest of the book trails the life of these three through WWII and into the girl’s own revelations at her life’s end.

But it wasn’t the story alone, more how carefully the author entwined their lives and perceptions. The writing style is no more than glimpses of their psyche, and moments described in breathtaking detail. It reminded me of my own rambling thoughts and what I perceive to be my writing style should I ever put pen to paper. Never plot of dialogue heavy, but moved by glimpses, phrases, moments winding in and out in a stream of conscience and all coming together as a whole in the end.

I had briefly toyed with the thought of authorship in grade school and early in high school. I love words, what they can do, but the task of pulling the stories that spun though my head and penning them never satisfied me. I couldn’t do it. I still can’t. My mind moves to fast for my fingers to keep up. In a sense, I suppose that’s why I’ve abandoned the pen and picked up the brush. Yet I chose a field that still depends on the telling of stories, stemming from a desire to explain, showcase and capture the human condition.

A brush stroke on the paper, in a way, conveys in a thousand words what my mind is thinking or seeing. I can express an emotion with a quick heavy line or a thin flutter with what would take hours of careful word selection to write. I don’t regret my abandonment of writing, though at times I wonder if I should return to it. Especially considering the fabricated characters of my early college years and the conviction is which I told their stories.