Often I sit down
with a blank page and wait for a word or a memory to work its way towards me. Then
I take it and run as fast as my mind can spit out sentences and stories. The
amazing thing to me is I don’t know where I'm going with it, like how are the
characters going to evolve? Will it have a happy ending, or will a thousand
tears fall?
It's so quiet here
in the back room where I write and dream and realize who I am and my purpose
for being here. There is one noise, my elderly neighbor doesn’t believe in air
conditioning, so the sound from her TV softly enters my cracked door. It has
become a part of my silence.
Some writers will
tell you they are inspired by this or that, and they find building a story can
take years off your life. They say sometimes it just flows without end and
other times they don’t write for weeks even months. That’s not true for me. I
write something every day. It may be a paragraph about a thought or a complete
page filled with one-liners I keep writing down. Writing for me is a drug, it’s
the booze I don’t drink anymore or the joint I wish I had. Its food for my soul
and water to quench the thirst for a story.
Writing is the very
lifeblood of who I am, and as I grow in age, the importance of it grows with
me. Once it was for the fun of doing something others wish they could.Now, its
because I want to leave behind a part of me that made up who I was. For reasons
only I know its important that my children and grandchildren will be able to
read a book I wrote where they could see the funny part of me, or browse
through stacks of my work where they will wonder if the stories are real?
Painters create
great works of art that will adorn the walls of those they left behind. Writers
work will gather dust until a broken heart needs comfort or dreaming about
adventure comes alive in written words. I want my stories to be a comfort and
an escape into my private world full of who I truly am. I want my great-great
grandchildren to read and be proud of the guy who wrote the stories.
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