The first thing I'd say: this is not something I chose.
The second thing I'd say: that writing is like breathing, Involuntary, necessary, only ever able to be controlled but never stopped. Even when I'm not actively writing, my mind is.
The reason I started by explicitly stating that this was out of my control was because I really want to give you some idea of the power behind imagination. In a way, I don't control the imagination that makes me a writer. It controls me.
Sometimes, I do this writing exercise. I go to a cafe, or a coffee shop, or a park and, instead of drawing the people there as some artists do, I write about them. I imagine what they might act like, how they might talk, who they might love. I give them stories to match what I made up in my head. I put them in scenarios that they might have been in before or not.
That's how I live my life. Everything that happens is an event, every place I go is a setting, every person I meet is a character. In a lot of ways, this could be considered a good thing. My mind is always pretty active, I'm observant and I'm aware. But take my word for it, it ain't all sunshine and daisies. There are definite cons.
Like how sometimes people don't seem to match the image that I've made in my head, or how they don't act like how I thought they would. The problem with living like life is fiction is that it's not. I can't write people as though they're voodoo dolls even if, as bad as it sounds, I sometimes want to.
Contrary to popular belief, I do not always have my head in the clouds. Lots of people, when I say that I write creatively, take me to be a very specific type of person. Very airy, very dreamy...almost Bo-Ho, I'd say. This, unfortunately, is not true. Part of me wishes that I could be that person, without a care in the world, a "dreamer" - but being a writer does not automatically mean I'm a dreamer.
Being a writer means I'm good only at forging emotions I see around me. Being a writer means I can bury how I feel inside of words that sound nice. Being a writer means that I can talk about myself, about things that happened to me, without anyone ever knowing that it's actually me. In a lot of ways, writing is a form of truth. In a lot of other ways, writing is a form of hiding.
Sometimes, it's hard to tell the difference.
Sometimes, there is none.
