Why I Write

It can start with a single word. One, tiny, insignificant, minuscule, word that somehow, sparks something inside you. As soon as that one word is planted in your mind, it begins to grow. It grows and grows, until there is no more room in your head.

It spreads down your arms and into your wrists, tickling them as it stretches deep into your fingers. You twiddle your thumbs, tap out a beat, try writing something down, but it doesn’t die out; it just keeps getting bigger.

Then, that one unclear, undeveloped idea finds its way into your mouth where it turns into words, phrases- sentences even. It’s heavy and uncomfortable to keep inside of you. It feels like a marble sitting on your tongue, and it keeps rolling around, knocking against your teeth, until you just have to spit it out. You try saying the thought out loud, molding it and shaping it, trying to find some hidden meaning in this thing that will not leave you alone, though you have no idea what it is. It floats around awkwardly in a conversation, or on the corner of a notebook, or on the back of your hand, wherever you have decided to keep it, with no meaning, no purpose. Eventually, you put it aside, trying to forget it.

Days later, while in class, while reading a book, while washing the dog, while grocery shopping, occupying yourself with other day-to-day, mundane activities, your mind drifts, and in that moment when you are freed from thought, that pesky idea or phrase or whatever it has become at this point, find its way back in. This little seed has found just the moment it needs to grow, and it grows and grows again, sprouting words you never knew you had inside of you.

The words come so quickly, you struggle to remember them all, afraid to forget anything, and you scramble for something to write with. You don’t know how, exactly, but as soon as that pen touches the paper, it’s as if it takes on a life of its own. A story reveals itself to you, and you follow curiously behind your writing, with no idea as to where it will lead you.

You are thrown into a world entirely your own. You may fight as a soldier at war, run away from home, speak a different language, fall in love, or watch the sun rise from a fishing boat in the middle of the ocean. You can never be sure what will happen, until the story is complete. When it is finished, and you look at it again, it has become something beautiful, coloring the entire page with its vibrant abstractness that you found so unbearable only days before. This long, exhausting, irritating, process has resulted in something unique, something that only you could create.

And then, the most incredible part of it all happens when someone new, a stranger to your adventure, reads your story. You watch the reader’s smile rise and fall, their eyes fill with tears, hear them giggle or gasp, see their eyes widen in wonder at a world you have created, at a life that they have lived, because you have given it to them.