Why I Write

Wow! What a question to be asked at seven in the morning, but this was what was sent by a friend to my email. She is doing a little survey among a few of us that are aspiring authors...I believe that if you write anything that is yours and yours alone, published or not, you're a writer. Anyway, here goes my answer and if you don't follow it, is okay. My mind is kind of like those 3D pictures that were popular a million years ago, where you had to relax your eyes to see the image...well, in my mind's case, most of the time you have to be either completely drunk or nuts to understand it...most of my friends will tell you both helps tons.

Why I write...in the seventh grade, my mind began to wander down paths and into worlds that it ought not to when trying to learn math and science. I began creating characters in my mind since the rest of my imagination had been bottled up by moving to a new city and trying like hell to fit in. Gators, this girl couldn't fit into a mental ward, but try as I might, nothing seemed to work to stifle the caged beast from slipping out and making me miss the lessons my teachers were teaching.

Finally, one of the teachers I will always remember forever...Mrs. Moore, my seventh grade English teacher handed me a notebook and said three words that have forever changed my life..."WRITE IT DOWN." Never has better words been spoken to this little girl, who could never really find her place in the world to call her own. So, I made a world of my own.

With the quickness of my pen, I began to spin the webs of creativity, be it a poem about death, coffee, or just walking in a forest...to a full blown story about a heroine in search of her prince or crazed man with a shotgun, whichever the case may be. Notebooks filled with ideas that overtook me and flowed from my mind to my fingers like water from a faucet.

It has been more than fifteen years since that day, the day my teacher released the caged beast out on to paper and now, on to screen with the advancement of computers and Word...and the fact I can afford a laptop. Still, the mind continues its rants and though I have found quite a nice place to remain for a season or two, my place will always be in the stories I write. They are not only my blood...they are my soul bore out upon the sheets that soon will be tossed by the winds of change.

Why do I write you ask...well, the easiest way I can explain is...I write because I must. To silence the voices in my head, to free my imagination from the cage of reality, to search for that one thing that makes me...me. I write, my friends, because in writing, I feel complete. I found my place to belong, even if I had to create it to find it.