I want to write with a knife — no, not a knife, a sharpened sword that cuts through the paper. I want to write with a pen that bleeds all over the page, without any qualms about its near death. I want to write crazy and untamed. I want to write like I don’t know what I’m doing, a virgin who flicks the pen this way and that until she gets it right. I want to write like drunk people sing, no obligation to key or volume. I want to write like Beyoncé sings, like lions roar, like thunderstorms rock the house and clear the roads.

I want to write like a logger slashes down trees, avoiding falling limbs for his own life. I want to tear through the woods in the body of a wolf and scream at the moon; let me write like this. I want to write like someone throwing their body into the waves of a waterfall—it plunges them down, down, until they resurface and finally breathe. I want to write an anthem that people sing and speak and dance. I want to be a defining moment, the origin of a book, of important words. I want to write like your favorite outfit that shows a bit too much cleavage, saucy and confident and impossible not to acknowledge.

“That’s a great dress.”
“Yes, it is.”

I want to write like a jaguar, dark and dangerous, a plot quietly stirring, then suddenly pouncing to the surface. I want to write like the high you get at a concert, heart pulsing and limbs beating to every sound. I want to write like a woman, honest and unapologetic. I want to write like I’m never in the same place, like I flee to a different state every time my pen runs out of ink. I want to write like a whore, pouncing on every word I can, new or old, nice to the ears or rough on the tongue.

I want to, need to, write like I’m hungry, like the pages beneath me, the words spilling out on them, aren’t enough before they even hit the paper. I have to write like I’m hurt, oh-so-broken, because we are. I want to write like I believe in you and me and everyone around us. But sometimes good writing isn’t that.

I want to write like swings, bringing you up and then so low, leaving a pit in your stomach. I want to climb to the top of a mountain and scream the words, and have the clouds write them out for me. I want to write like I love, deep and honest and piercing; I want to have no reservations. I want to hold the words in my arms genuinely like I would a lover.

I want to write like I cry, hot and boiling mad, tears like sentences streaming out of my eyes. I want to run with a wand full of bubbles in my hand, laughing while pretty soap suds stream behind me, spelling out my message. I want to write like a bitch pees, hot and quick and dirty. I want to write with road rage, steamrolling my way through a story, flipping off the other characters.

I don’t want to write for a workshop or a research paper. I don’t want to write what people tell me to write. I don’t want to pinch my words and slash my paragraphs and rearrange my sentences. No, Faulkner, I don’t want to kill my darlings. I want to raise them up from the little roots I grew into big tall flowers that draw shade over everyone who has told me “no.”

I want to write for the sake of writing, of living in a moment longer than it lasts, for the absolute love of slanting your words just right so that the reader can feel your pain, your love, your trembling right through the goddamn piece of paper their holding. I want to write for me, for the tears in my eyes that form when I taste my own attitude or honesty, so perfectly captured with the phrases I coin.

This is the only way to write: with abandon. With unresolved feeling, with pent up emotion, with no cares as to what happens between you and the pen and the cup of tea forgotten and now chilled on your night stand. Write until your hand cramps and your eyes are wet and your face curves into a half smile, half grimace, for the satisfaction of the poetry you just plastered on paper and the pain of how it got there.

If one person—and one person only—gets something out of the words you scribble down on paper in thirty seconds or stumble over for hours, it will have been worth it. Even if that one person is you.

Write for yourself. Because as long as you do this, the words will come out smooth like the honey in your tea, jagged like the fire in the forest, alive like the look in your eyes when you finally write “the end.”