We write because there’s a precedent. There’s an urgency. There’s a time that we won’t be able to write anymore. There’s a day that will come when we run out of words, and until that moment we need to write down every inspiration we stumble upon. There are people in dark places that must hear what we have to say. We write because we have our very own novel inside of us that has a birthday, we just don’t know when that day will come. We write to be a part of two worlds; an imaginary and a reality. We do it because we have a story to tell. Because there is a story that we know in our mind that nobody else has ever heard. A story that people need to hear. A myriad of adjectives and verbs and nouns in our hearts. In our souls. Behind our lips, itching to be told. We write because it makes our jaded bodies feel whole because it completes us. We write to discover things. New visions. New tomorrows. Ourselves. We write to make sense of a world that doesn’t make much sense at all. We write to make sense of our every day, the loves of our lives. We write to make sense of it all.
We write our way out of smoke and scalding embers. Out of the terrible moments. Out of times that we were in the dark and we were blind and alone. When we are in the darkest alley in the middle of the night and we don’t know where to turn. We take a bar napkin or a journal or a to go cup or the notes app in our iPhone and we write. We scribble down a word, we write a quote, we scratch down a few sentences and we know which direction to turn. We start in the center of all the madness in our worlds and we fight our way out. We write what disturbs us, what we fear, what we have not been willing to think about. We write to allow words to split us open. We write to give ourselves strength when we need it. We write to create the character’s we are not. We let them make the mistakes we never want to make ourselves.
We write because we drink too much caffeine to not turn that energy into books. We write because we have conscious dreams that need to bleed onto paper. We write because it is chaotic, it is difficult, it is secretly magnificent. We write because we meet people who need to be painted with words, we fall in love and we find a person who is exactly the poem we need to write. We write because our pen is on fire, we ignite our words until they are seared into our reader’s memory. We have writer’s block. We sift through ash to find gold. We take a deep breath and close our journal and continue on. We write because we woke up one morning and committed ourselves to our paper and our pen. We write because we have been given the gift of words. We love words. We have built our words into castles and palaces around people.
We write because we want to affect people. We want them to breathe in all of the bad things in their lives, and read our writing and exhale, letting it all go. We want them to find a truth. An answer. We will be there for all of the readers, everyone who picks up a piece of our writing. In the subway and in coffee shops and in bed and in school. Metaphors are the best medicine. Similies are therapeutic and alliteration is so satisfactory to the world that it can take our minds off of all of the things in our lives we feel like we can’t bare.
When I write my first play or novel or book of poems I will rip it from my arms and set it down on a table in front of me. I will lie on the floor and sob into the ground. Because no matter what, no matter how horrible or incredible or pathetic it is, it is mine. Once I am done crying I will hand a copy to my mother and father and I will read my favorite chapters aloud to my grandmother at her bedside.
My first piece of writing will feel as good as being in love; warm and tingling and special and surreal. Some people will read it and fall for it. A lot of people are never going to come across it in their lives. That is okay, I hope those people have found something inspiring and touching and precious enough to them that they do not need it. That first novel or play will be born of all of places I have been.
Physically and mentally. Both the dark places and the bright places. It will be born of the last twenty or so years of my life that I spent writing it even though I didn’t even realize I was. Every friendship or torn relationship will be a part of my first piece. It will be born of the drunk food I have eaten since I discovered how good fried things taste late at night. It will be born of the horse notebook I still have that I got when I was six. It will be born of all the teachers and mentors that told me I can. And everyone who told me that I can’t.
It will be born of the 3 am basement laughter and the fireworks every third of July over the river in my backyard. It will be born of embarrassing stories and trips to bookstores and the summer of my senior year. It will be born of every pair of funny pajamas I have ever owned and the smell of my dad’s cooking.
I cannot wait for that day. The day my first piece is finished and will be published and will be my job, my career, my life. Something I can hold in my hands and page through and scribble in. Something other people will hold in their hands and page through and annotate. I write because I have committed my life to words. I write because it is my world. I write because I bleed words.
