Why Do I Write?

Winter Wear

Always a good consideration... I have to ask myself these kinds of questions from time to time: Why do I write?" What am I trying accomplish? Are there readers who would read what I write? It isn't as though I think I have anything profound to say. If there is something that resonates... that's what I aim for... resonating frequencies. I want to see my words and say... ahhh, at last I've gotten it out... at last there is a mark on the page that meets with someone else's imagination. So I write crazy shit about crazy shit thinking that maybe it matters and send it out to meet rejection after rejection from publishers and agencies... forever hoping someone will pick it up and put the damned thing in on the bookshelves somewhere.

Reading what others like me have gotten published inspires and then depresses  me. I return to the keys and the empty page, setting out to find my joy, and I clack away at the tapper-rapper (my daughter used to call it)... never-minding punctuation and grammar... spell check takes care of the rest. Remembering when I began my first novel... how I tried to start it... how many times I made mad stabs at the beginning... how to tell the tale... nope, that won't work... put it aside... pause... go back at it and then half way through those first images I portrayed something happened and it clicked. I knew I was writing that novel I dreamed of... the words followed the story. I was no longer trying to be witty or something I wasn't. I was opening up old wounds... and joys... remembering what I knew... observations of experiences... creating characters and places I've seen and wanted others to see them through eyes of their own.

In the winter months it never gets to cold here... rarely below freezing. I get up early... before the morning light of the sun rise paints the mountains with its cadmium tints... don't turn on the heat... put on cheap cotton gloves with the fingers cut out and warm moccasins on my feet... sweat-shirt and pants with a hot cup of coffee... Oh, god, how I love it before my lady rises. Quiet, alone with my muse... she leads me. I realize in these time why I write... why I write ... why I write.