Oh, Why I Am a Writer

Sometimes, I like to take note from my partners in crime. Today this post idea comes from Lorelle of Phoenix Rising, based on her post, “Why I Want to Be a Writer“.

I have never not written.
I will never not write.

I have an obsession with all the places I have yet to be. An obsession with all the places that have yet to exist. It’s a certain obsession I can’t put aside. I can’t forget about. My mind creates places and then creates people to put inside those places. I give them tiny lives and I watch them surround one another, intersecting and falling away from one another. It is pattern play.

I have always had stories, I have always fictionalized myself. There was no part in my lifeline where I decided to be a writer. I tried to shrug it off and push it aside, but it always comes back. It doesn’t haunt, but it’s this perpetual feeling of heaviness in my body. If it is not what I am doing, I feel wrong. Not incomplete, but wrong. Incorrect. As if I am going against the matter inside of me.

I am a writer because I believe I have too much inside of me and it has to get out, out, out. Because when someone else sees it and it makes sense to them, I have a sense of understanding. Of peace. I made a connection. Writing is my connector. Connector, connector. Every story is a connection, every line and word and paragraph. I like the puzzle of it. I like putting it together. There are subtle details and revelations I didn’t know at the beginning that keep me at it. If at the end I put everything together in a tight, neat collection of words then I am pleased. It is how I know I am a writer, because I will keep at it.

Everything, everything goes together. Words, situations, characters, settings. Stories emerge. Everything goes together, me being a writer. Stories will emerge.