Writers are interesting people. But we're not interesting all the time. No one is twenty-four seven. Well, except for puppies and dogs -- they will always be interesting.

Tangents are the plague to a writer, but that's what editing is for. Revision is necessary for any writing if a writer wants to have a polished version of their thoughts. The dog tangent I went on was short and sweet, but they aren't always. Writing -- both the act of writing and the finished (or so the writer may think) product -- is complicated, and sometimes confusing. We can get sidetracked often, in conversation, and in thought, because we don't want to miss writing opportunities.

One of the worst things about being a writer is having too many thoughts pop into your head at once. Whether they're thinking about characters for a story, article ideas, or lines for a poem (or five), occasionally, everything will spring into a writer's mind at one time. It's overwhelming, and writers can often find themselves surprised at the amount of creativity they have in a given moment.

Or maybe, they'll have nothing. The saying "I've got nothing?" That happens -- it is actually such a reality in a writer's life. It occurs too frequently for my liking in my own writing. My mind will be blank, barren of ideas or concepts, or seemingly even knowledge -- for the moment, at least.

Writers think. And think. And then think some more. They'll probably get frustrated. I think all writers are blessed - er, sometimes cursed - with the ability to think about things, and analyze them. We're scientists of language and words. We'll take a paragraph and dissect it until we aren't sure that we know the meaning anymore, because we've thought about it so much. We will often work on a section, chapter, or paragraph until we don't even know what we were originally going for.

Sometimes this ability will make a writer overthink the simplest things. They will begin to form habits of picking apart responses from anyone they encounter. Sometimes this comes off as us overreacting. Please excuse the writers in your life for this. It's something we wish we could turn off sometimes. It's tiring having to explain ourselves, and impossible to change how we think.

We try to explain through our writing -- or we don't. Some of us write to tell our secrets, some of us tell to avoid them. We write to heal, to vent, to understand.

But one thing is constant -- our love of writing. Conveying our thoughts, passions, fears, struggles, accomplishments, and dreams into words is our goal.It's not always easy,but it's always worth it.