I Am a Writer

I am a writer, long or short, boring or interesting, briefs or boxers it doesn't matter. I can elaborate on rainy day gloom or a grain of sand that has blown far from the beach to scorch slowly on an urban blacktop. I am a writer, one who draws pictures with words and illustrates images with language. I am a writer, doodling and drawing, scribbling on the sides of pages until inspiration taps me on the shoulder and tells me to start writing again. I am a writer, a writer of songs of life and words of not necessarily wisdom.

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After I write for a long time like this my hand starts to hurt and I start to think about quitting, but then I think about how nothing in life is easy including writing. Sometimes writing can be an effort like this is now, but I buckle down and keep the pen moving. It's important to me as a writer to not let my brain stop me from expressing myself at a particular time. There are always feelings and emotions that can be transmitted into words even without thought. Letting the pen and paper get the better of me is unacceptable and almost embarrassing, almost like letting a child beat you at a game of chess, you know he doesn't know the rules yet he finds every weakness in your attack and finds faults in your defenses.

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Writing is almost like life on paper. The images are so vivid, at least to me, that they seem real. The images appear like a dream in my head at first and then as they transfer onto paper they become real. I breathe life into my dream as the pen resuscitates the heartbeat of my thoughts.

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My head swims for a minute and then thoughts become clear. One emerges like lighting on a freight train, screaming and thundering to the front of my brain. It was like the thought was already there staring me in the face, and I just didn't see it. The writing starts. The words pour forth. My life pours forth spilling little by little onto the page. Bleeding ink into words into images and actions, shapes and sounds, creating the organs and limbs of my work. Action followed by thought followed by action exercised in pen movement and irritable scratching sounds on paper as my thoughts can't pout out fast enough, at which point I reply "more action!", and now the experience is on paper.

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Writing is like moving through water. There is always some resistance but movement is smooth and fluid, almost soothing. The harder you try to move through the more resistance you receive, but progress is measured and even. Water also gives the feeling of comfort, being surrounded and weightless, almost like a newborn in swaddling clothes.

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I first think about how I wish I could write faster and without my hand hurting. My mind races against my fingers and wrist to finish the thought before the ink hits the page. My hand usually loses this race, but sometimes it just keeps moving irrelevant of whether thoughts are coming forth. Other times words get lost in the rush to put them on paper.

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Losing words is like losing a piece of yourself when writing. You feel like a piece of yourself has gone missing and you will go to the ends of the earth to find it. It's like looking down at your feet and not seeing them. You begin to get frustrated, "where did my feet go?", then "what am I going to do without them!" That one word that makes everything come together, everything click or flow. Sometimes the word gives you the feeling that the reader will know exactly what you mean, but it's gone, lost in a torrent of timeless thought. Then the real problem develops, how do you find a substitute for perfection?

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Writing can be done anywhere, but preferably at home or in a natural setting among leaves, trees, and animals. Perfect writing setting: a cool fall day with a myriad of colors surrounding your senses, reds, blues, greens, of leaves, browns and yellows of trees, mottled grays and shaded blacks of furry woodland creatures. Although, a nice easy chair with a yellow shaded lamp is better for more contemplative serious writing.

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Pens and pencils are the way to go for expression, slamming away at a keyboard doesn't have the same feeling as pouring out ink in furious slashes or scratching away with a dull pencil leaving indentions in the paper that show the force of writing. Yellow paper too, yeeeellllooowww paper, with blue lines in a legal pad format. Black pens with an easy flow of ink. Pencils with dull edges that make you press hard to leave your words driven into the paper rather than left lying on it with no depth at all. These things are essential to writing and writing comfortably. Certain combinations of these tolls are unstoppable and all of them are incorruptible in their inanimate state.

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In writing I hope to learn better and more effective writing communication skills. To be able to transfer my thoughts into critical writing and have others be able to appreciate the same points I am trying to illustrate.

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Reading makes me sleepy while my thoughts are wide awake. Writing makes me wide awake while my thoughts become sleepy and dreamlike.