Smithing and Writing

​Blog 7-19-17
Smithing and Writing
 
This past weekend I drove to Mineral Point in the heart of the Driftless Region for a class at the Shake Rag Alley School of the Arts in Blacksmithing.  I attended a beginning blacksmithing course several years ago, learned about fire, and basic forging skills and ending the class with a variety of steel hooks.  I can’t explain why I have an appetite for smithing – I just do.  In the Shake Rag Alley School of the Arts catalog they offered a variety of smithing classes this year, several more extensive than the basic course.  I chose the course on making a bell from an old oxygen tank.
Smithing is like the Latin Language, it is nearly dead expect for those who appreciate metal craftwork made by hand.  What is a blacksmith? 
A blacksmith is a metalsmith who creates objects from wrought iron or steel by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut (Wikipedia).
The first line of the sentence begins to explain my love for the art “a metalsmith who creates objects . . .”  Blacksmithing is a creative craft.  As I breathed in dark bellowing smoke from the charcoal fire in the forge and pounded a quarter inch metal rod in the shape I desired I experienced a eureka moment.  For me, blacksmithing is a metaphor for writing.
Pounding out words on my lap top, forming them into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into chapters and story evolves with characters, a plot and a story.
True smithing takes years to learn the fine art of the craft including forge welding.  Writing takes years to learn and the learning never ceases.  You can become a master blacksmith and continue learning as you can become a master writer and continue to learn with each completed writing project.
Blacksmithing forces me to express myself in a different medium that is physical and at the end of the day my clothes are filled with soot, my arm muscles sore from swinging a hammer for eight hours, my legs ache from standing over the anvil.  I hang my bell on a hook in the blacksmith shop, grab the clapper and thrill at the clear, crisp ring of metal against metal.  It has been a good day.