I write because I want to emulate the writers who have brought me so much pleasure over the years. I have always been a voracious reader and at some point, I think in my late teens, I decided I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a writer and I wanted to be published in the hope that others would want to read my stories. That being said, writing is often very difficult for me. I usually enjoy putting down the first draft as I write very quickly and it can be fun bringing to life the story that I have in my head. But sometimes this can be drudgery and I have to will myself to stay in the chair and write. I also have a love hate relationship with editing. I'm very much a perfectionist and so this means many, many rewrites. The other thing is that I always write for publication. I go through spurts where I'll do some very short journal entries as a warm up before the days work, and I might enter my writing in a contest or something similar, but most of the time I write for keeps. I don't do exercises. Nearly everything I put down I hope to sell or at least see published. I take writing very seriously but I also get a lot of pleasure from realizing my vision for the story and then having an editor agree that it is a good story and want to publish it. I sometimes envy those who say they write for the sheer joy of it, but that's not how it is for me. I write because I made the commitment to be a writer a long time I go and I've never given up. I took a poetry class in college and, in answer to another student's question about how long they should devote to writing poetry in order to find out if they were good at it, the teacher said that to find out how good you could become, you had to devote your entire life to writing. I made a similar commitment and, for better or worse, and I'm still at it.
Writing is sort of my much needed medice, my prozac. Published or not, I need it to stay afloat, to keep smiling and to occasionally clear out the attic from all the toys. Simple as that. To me, and I am very thankful for this, writing has never been a must do. A must do for me is; call friends more often, go to bed earlier, start exercising, eating healthier etc. Not writing though, I've simply never stopped doing it long enough for it to become a must do. Note: With writing I mean songs - music and lyrics. Nice to hear where others come from though I must say. Thanks for sharing. Oh and not to come off as too easy going about the whole creative process, I love it no doubt, but it's a constant battle between heaven and hell, me being god's gift to mankind one day and the plauge walking the earth the other. Yes, while I'm right in the middle of it I'm that dramatic. ;-)
<<When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.'>> http://www.allwords.ca/erma-bombeck-famous-quotes/
I always doubt whether I'm a good writer - But I never doubt that this is something I want to/need to/ am compelled to do.
