Of Motivations And Writing Needs

Long before any of my artistic pursuits, there was writing. Of course, reading came before writing, as arguably listening comes before singing, or looking before painting and sculpting but these earlier acts are acts of receiving and not of creating, hence, not generally considered artistic acts. And, if I ever was anything, I was a bibliovore. No, there is no such word but bibliophile seems too tame a name for the animal I was about books. I practically lived on them, foregoing all other natural acts like eating(until I’m faint), or defecating (until my head was full of ammonia), or sleeping (until my head ached like I had a day with a dentist who ran out anesthesia). It is only but natural that all that voracious reading should make me try my hand at writing. And tried I have. The results may have been less than spectacular but more than things to read, they were things I HAD to write. All that intake of words must naturally result to an outward release. The parallelism towards eating and the opposite action may be less palatable than it is proper.

I’ve said it before that I am more able to write in times of despair. Eloquence lends itself well to tortuous run-on sentences. I often feel relieved after writing about my personal little tragedies. Again, we can bring up the earlier cited natural act of bowel movement but lest this brings to mind steamy, foul-smelling, piles of feces, we shall instead attribute the relief to the order writing brings to the mess that all of life is. In a piece of writing, there is an imaginary beginning and an as-much-imagined ending. If only because there is the first word and the period at the end. When in truth, all of life is but one continuous tangle of choices and consequences.

And so I write. I write now not because it is a dark time. There have been darker times. Crows in the sky no more but a crossing of a meadow to listen to larks. No harbinger but a salve. Something to calm a throbbing portion of my soul.

The past year has been… What adjective can sum it all up? Which adjectives can be strung together to even approach how the past year felt?

This is why I feel the need to write more often. How to remember the feeling of each singular moment the past year has brought? How to remember the joys, the sadness, and more importantly, the lessons.

Yet, like an unused muscle, my writing voice is sluggish. Like a pen with dried up ink on its tip, I start and occasionally stop to shake my head to loosen the flow of my thoughts. It is still there, my writing voice. Slow to start, rusty, but serviceable.

Have an inspiring morning everyone!