Monday, May 8, 2017

Why Write?

Notes from the editor's desk: Going to try working back up to a normal schedule and getting at least one post a week up as I work to get things back on track.

There are people who've spent their entire lives knowing that they wanted to write, have a novel or short stories from when they were a teenager stuck in a drawer somewhere. People who go to school for an MFA in literature.

I envy them in a way.



I didn't know what I wanted to do. I ended up where I did because I didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted out of my life. And when that left me staring unemployment in the face at one point, I turned to writing as a method of keeping myself sane.

And I liked it. I have dreamed and daydreamed every day since I was so young. My oldest friend tells me he's suggested I should write from the time we were in high school, so maybe it's just another of those things that everyone but me can see. I've struggled with it in fits and starts for the past six years, falling off and coming back to this keyboard and pushing myself, trying to capture something.

I keep pulling myself back here, trying to get back to writing. Because it feels good. I like being able to spin out a story, to share something that captures people. Even if right now it's only a small group of friends that I've convinced to read my writing.

And it feels like something that I can actually take ownership of in my life. In a lot of ways, I feel like I've been blown by the winds of fortune and my of biochemistry, reaching out and trying to capture that part of my brain where the stories live, building the muscles that help me put it into the world instead of floating in the back of my head.

So I don't write because I've always known that I wanted to be a writer. But I've always been a dreamer, and writing is just one way that I left people see into my dreams.

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