Being a writer can feel kind of like having ADHD and bipolar disorder and depression all at the same time. You start off sitting outside on a warm summer day and begin writing a poem about fall leaves because you're tired of summer. Then you think of how, when the leaves change color, it is really the beginning of a death of a tree and you feel bad and write an ode to an oak instead. Afterwards you feel very sad and sentimental and spend the rest of the evening journaling about the meaning of life.
Then there are times when you can't write about anything at all, when you stare at a blank page who's mocking gaze sends you spiraling into a sudden bout of self-hatred and you end up watching Dead Poet's Society and drinking tea instead. Or it can be completely opposite. You can try to write about one thing and suddenly write about a million things that are in no relation to the first thing at all. Suddenly, you're faced with this monstrous soup of words that seem cliché and brilliant all at the same time and you have no idea what that means, so you slowly close your notebook, slide back from your desk, and walk bleary eyed down the street and try to think about what nonsense you just leaked all over your paper.
So why the heck do we write? Are we masochists? Do we like to feel like our very thoughts are monsters who are out to get us? I don't think so. It's more like being on this infinite hunt, searching for that one thought that, when we finally have a hold of it in the palms of our hands, it shines brightly back into our eyes instead of crumbling into a pile of ash. Even when we've been staring at our computer screen for so long that our eyes have broken out with red streaks, we have this instinct that, somewhere around the corner, there is some thought so far above any thought we've ever thought before and we have a need to put it down on paper, to prove that it's real.
There are times when I feel like nothing I'm writing is worth anything, like I'm screaming out at the universe, but my brain and tongue are disconnected and all that comes out is some unintelligible rubbish that makes sense to no one, not even me. But I know that it's worth finding that one line that makes you smile as it's pieced together by your pencil. It's worth it because I know that, in the process of finding that thought, I get to live twice. I get to write down the world and then sit back and look at it built up before me. Even if I run out of nails and have to use duck tape and the whole thing is a bit rickety, I can still call it mine. And that one pure, gleaming thought that sits at the heart of it all makes it enough.
Then there are times when you can't write about anything at all, when you stare at a blank page who's mocking gaze sends you spiraling into a sudden bout of self-hatred and you end up watching Dead Poet's Society and drinking tea instead. Or it can be completely opposite. You can try to write about one thing and suddenly write about a million things that are in no relation to the first thing at all. Suddenly, you're faced with this monstrous soup of words that seem cliché and brilliant all at the same time and you have no idea what that means, so you slowly close your notebook, slide back from your desk, and walk bleary eyed down the street and try to think about what nonsense you just leaked all over your paper.
So why the heck do we write? Are we masochists? Do we like to feel like our very thoughts are monsters who are out to get us? I don't think so. It's more like being on this infinite hunt, searching for that one thought that, when we finally have a hold of it in the palms of our hands, it shines brightly back into our eyes instead of crumbling into a pile of ash. Even when we've been staring at our computer screen for so long that our eyes have broken out with red streaks, we have this instinct that, somewhere around the corner, there is some thought so far above any thought we've ever thought before and we have a need to put it down on paper, to prove that it's real.
There are times when I feel like nothing I'm writing is worth anything, like I'm screaming out at the universe, but my brain and tongue are disconnected and all that comes out is some unintelligible rubbish that makes sense to no one, not even me. But I know that it's worth finding that one line that makes you smile as it's pieced together by your pencil. It's worth it because I know that, in the process of finding that thought, I get to live twice. I get to write down the world and then sit back and look at it built up before me. Even if I run out of nails and have to use duck tape and the whole thing is a bit rickety, I can still call it mine. And that one pure, gleaming thought that sits at the heart of it all makes it enough.