Being a writer is tiring. Sometimes it isn't enough that I give myself the luxury of shutting the world out while I indulge what I call "a need to create" as if not putting myself on paper were the same as denying myself food or air. Certainly, the practice and craft of writing is food for the soul, and, if done well, it absolutely lives and breathes and has a pulse that is connected, yet somehow separate and self-sustaining.
But writing is a gift I give myself because I want it.
And because I feel compelled by it in some way.
And then, after I have opened that gift one more time, put my thoughts down and lived with them a bit, I ask others to gift me by reading and living with them too. My words. My thoughts. And not just live with them, but embrace them and love them. I want people to talk to me about my writing, to talk to others about my writing, even though so often all I am doing is writing the same story over and over and over again, adding a person here or an image there, or perhaps looking at the same story at a slightly different angle this time. I want people - my friends, my family, my readers (whoever they may be) - to find something new and unique in every one of my words, whether or not they are familiar because I have already written various versions of them several times. Or because someone else has already written them. I am a human being telling a human story and a person telling a personal story. And it is wonderful. And powerful. And tiring.
For all these reasons, I often hesitate to admit that I love to write. That I do write. That I am a writer. And yet these are the very same reasons that I proudly insist -- when asked "And what do you do?" by people who assume I will give them a laundry list of my Monday-Friday, 9-5 desk job duties -- "I write. I am a writer."
No comments:
Post a Comment