So You Like to Write, Huh?

It's a dying art form that the general population doesn't really pay attention to or respect any more. This by no means suggests that it isn't fiercely competitive and a long hard road out of hell if you want to actually make a living with your pen. (Or laptop). Whatever, you get the idea.

Oh, I forgot to mention that a very high number of the great icon writers that we study and look up to ended up killing themselves.

In essence, writing is having a conversation with yourself. The same thing that will get you thrown into the nuthouse if you're caught doing it in public enough.

And you really start to submit to the idea that you're all alone with your laptop because no one will read what you pour your guts out into. Sure, maybe the guy or girl who's trying to get you in bed will suck it up and read your crap to earn some brownie points. Sure, maybe your family will try to sit down and see what you're life is all about.

If your family is anything like mine, they'll just kinda skim it and get the key points enough to fake a conversation about it so they can get back to SportsCenter.

I started writing when I was 13. My father just finally read my work last month. He was shocked.

"You're...you're...really good!"

"Thanks dad."

Get the picture?

How can I blame him though? I don't. I wouldn't want to read anything a depressed 13 was scribbling away in class when she was supposed to be learning history. Nor would I wand to read much of the crap I wrote in subsequent years.

Actually, it just would have scared the hell out of him.

Maybe writers, even if they're very social, have a feeling of isolation anyway. We make up people and give them jobs and lovers. We give them words to speak and create situations for them.

I think that if you look behind every truly great character that's been written in literature or for film, there's a very lonely writer there in the background.

Those amazing beloved characters that endear an entire nation. They end up "existing" because a writer needed to feel a connection to someone or something. Anything, really.

Even if it's just fiction.

Earlier I was thinking about a sort of chicken-or-egg theory when it comes to this trade, this thing we do: Does writing help us heal and vent, or is it just a symptom of being addicted to pain?

Are we all massochists?

If sadness is our cocktail, then I wonder if the act of writing creatively is that cigarette that we have to enjoy with our drink.

Here's to the writers. Cheers. And let's try to stay away from shotguns, sharp objects and pills, huh?