Deciding to write for some people is like deciding to breath. You don't ever simply wake up one morning and proclaim, "I'm going to be a writer." It's just there always. It may be a silent urge, hidden just out of sight and unexplainable for years, or it may be glaring in the face of the person each time he or she sits down with a pen and paper or in front of a glimmering computer screen.
The point is, the decision is never made. It was once said, by some writer somewhere, that writers are driven. They are not driven by the writing, rather they are driven by demons that force them to expel words onto the paper. Naturally, in the age of social media, thousands of these silent writers have found voices that speak out. They speak with short quips about life, or long drawn out presentations. They write about family, friends, politics, and since they are safe behind the confines of their computer screens, some fictionalize the lives they live. Social media has certainly brought the writer out, good or bad, in many people.
Regardless of whether a demon drives, a writer loves to write, or a person simply starts tying and something, sometimes something amazing, flows out the writer writes. For good or bad, the writer writes. Far too often the writer has the desire, the burn, but lacks the tools and skills to complete the mission. He feels the draw, but instead of the fine prose that soars around inside his head, a jumble of words and phrases fill a page with little to no connectivity. Still he writes. In the end, it doesn't matter whether the writing is good, bad or even ugly. It only matters that the writer, that hidden possibly demon-driven individual, has managed to write or transcend what is in the mind to what is seen on the paper. She may never sell a book, poem, or sentence, but nobody will ever be able to say she didn't writer in the end.
I knew someone years ago who wanted to be a writer. He never followed his dream, to my knowledge, never sought the satisfaction of writing. The individual became a mechanic, surrounded by schematics and parts and no quality writing to read. I, the one who laughed when he said he wanted to write, ended up writing daily. I write for pay and sometimes for nought. I, the laugher of the writer, found that I was driven more by the demons than the friend I knew so long ago.
The point is, the decision is never made. It was once said, by some writer somewhere, that writers are driven. They are not driven by the writing, rather they are driven by demons that force them to expel words onto the paper. Naturally, in the age of social media, thousands of these silent writers have found voices that speak out. They speak with short quips about life, or long drawn out presentations. They write about family, friends, politics, and since they are safe behind the confines of their computer screens, some fictionalize the lives they live. Social media has certainly brought the writer out, good or bad, in many people.
Regardless of whether a demon drives, a writer loves to write, or a person simply starts tying and something, sometimes something amazing, flows out the writer writes. For good or bad, the writer writes. Far too often the writer has the desire, the burn, but lacks the tools and skills to complete the mission. He feels the draw, but instead of the fine prose that soars around inside his head, a jumble of words and phrases fill a page with little to no connectivity. Still he writes. In the end, it doesn't matter whether the writing is good, bad or even ugly. It only matters that the writer, that hidden possibly demon-driven individual, has managed to write or transcend what is in the mind to what is seen on the paper. She may never sell a book, poem, or sentence, but nobody will ever be able to say she didn't writer in the end.
I knew someone years ago who wanted to be a writer. He never followed his dream, to my knowledge, never sought the satisfaction of writing. The individual became a mechanic, surrounded by schematics and parts and no quality writing to read. I, the one who laughed when he said he wanted to write, ended up writing daily. I write for pay and sometimes for nought. I, the laugher of the writer, found that I was driven more by the demons than the friend I knew so long ago.
