Writing is
not a job for sissies. It is a demanding
job, something that can drain you, leaving you empty of all emotion, empty of
any resemblance to a human being; and that is when it is going not just well,
but great. It is a job like no other,
running you ragged for months. Then leaving you desolate for even longer,
convinced that you are wrung dry, that not a sentence will ever be birthed from
your mind, that you will die a mumbling fool, struggling to string single syllable
words together in a manner a four-year-old child may understand.
It is also
a passion that will keep you awake and writing for days, spitting out verbal
photos, painting stories and imagining the truth in a new, articulate way,
showing the way for the next generation of wordsmiths and connoisseurs of the
written art.
Writing is
not something you do, it is something you ARE.
You ARE creating a mindset, a space for an imagination to be, to share
with other like-minded readers. It is an
art to draw in inquisitive minds, to sketch an outline for a person with an
imagination, to GIFT a person with the ability to see an idea you had, but to allow
them to fill in their own details. It is
a gift, and it is a curse that let you image and fill in the worst you can
imagine.
The
double-edged sword, the true love that hates you, the only true lucky packet
that may have a diamond or an exploding turd, or both; it is the roll of the
dice, the fall of the cards, the push or the pull; the smile or the frown; the
helping hand or the fist. Writing is
like bungee-jumping; you are either falling with the certainty that this is to
your death, or shouting with joy that the rope held this time. There are the few moments when you are just
slowing down, moving from sheer terror to exquisite joy, but these are just
seconds, not stages in your life.
I am a
writer, and none the better for the wear this fact of life is adding to my
life. It is not making my life any
easier, it is not adding a lot of value to my life, and it is not even making
sense in my life. It is, however,
complicating my life, ruining a simple life, adding stress to my life, making
me despair, adding depression and unwanted emotional baggage.
Suffering,
for my art, because of my art, through my art, is my reason for living; and it
is not enough, so I seek out the dark, bleak, hurtful spots, and BLAZE with
emotion through them, living every moment, FEELING every hurt, every pain,
every slight, and reporting them as faithfully as possible, to fill bland lives
with emotion.
I am a
writer, and you are my audience. We need
each other, because we are a team.
