I love writing . It ’ s always there for me . Like that good friend that you might not see or speak to in forever , but that you pick up right where you left off the moment you meet again , bond unloosened , love unchanged . There is the warm , tight hug hello , the head in the shoulder kind , before slipping into the old routine , conversation natural , normal , easy . You know , that good old friend . The always there for you friend .
But that is just the slightest sip of a very full bottle .
It ’ s not long before old friends reunite into old lovers and I lose myself in the fray of it completely . A merged mind that is and isn ’ t mine takes over , spinning visions into words faster than I can thread them together . I ’ ll often read things back completely anew , devoid of any awareness of having created them at all , as though the victim of a scripted fever dream , so hot it burned the memory , but that the word soaked pages bear unassailable witness to its happening .
When I write , I cannot be spoken to . I do not watch things or listen to music . If interrupted , I will snarl and snap at you viciously , like a wild dog whose kill you just reached for while he was devouring it . I cannot really hear you anyway , and truly , I don ’ t care what you have to say ... it can wait . It is simply not as important as bringing these words into being in the order of my choosing . You need not like my words nor have cause to be impressed by them , but do understand that regardless of perception or opinion , there is great power in the forging of them .
Do not come between me and my craft , we surge with energy from unknown places ; we are not a process to be trifled with . And that ’ s what we are , my craft and I , a process . Not a culmination . There is no end game . The end result is merely a byproduct of the making . I am in it for the action , climatic and febrile , plagued by cramped hands , burning eyes , exhausted brain and the pyretic , piling need . But I only have to get it right , so that I can relinquish it entirely . It can only be let go if it is satisfying , if not , I can ’ t give it up , it is then not finished - for it must be satiating to be final .
I am a creator , I must create , I must move on , I must keep going . Making is the breath in . Finishing is the breath out . I always need to breathe and breathe and breathe . There has come a point in my life where I realize the depth of that truth and have allowed it to engulf me whole .
When I was a teenager , this was not as admittedly so , as the early form of my craft