Write On

I think to myself everyday that I need to blog, and then bam (!) another day goes by and no blog. Suddenly, I am in danger of becoming an inconsistent, unreliable writer. I may already be in danger of being a whiney, boring one - but that is a different issue. Francis Pauli is a writer, not someone that wants to write, she is someone that HAS to write - therefore she is a writer. She has a blog called Speculative Friction and in it once a week, she writes about writing and getting published, etc. Her latest musings were about how anyone can write, even the dental hygienist (this discovery being made while the said hygienist was staring down her throat and doing important cleaning type things). This sparked a short conversation between us regarding whether anyone can write. My position being that generally when people say they want to write a book, what they are really saying is that they want to be published and turn out to be the next Stephanie Meyers or JK Rowlings. Francis, if I understood her correctly, feels that some people just have to write, that the stories are just brewing and crave to be written, Like I said she is a writer, I'm not. Oh, I can write, but I don't have any burning desire to, other than to irriate Jon (not very noble and minus 50 DKP for me). No, I write for a completely different reason, because I hate it. So why do I do it? Well, every year at the turn of the year, my youngest and I go to lunch and at some point she grabs a napkin, I provide a pen and we create our "Next year's agenda". Well this last year - I wrote on the napkin that I would take more risks, I would write more, of course I'm thinking journal - what I had for breakfast type stuff. I also made an off hand remark to a friend about "how I don't pretend to be perfect", caught myself and said "actually, I do". She just looked at me and said "nice save". Sigh, so....why do I write because it is a risk, it rips the veil of pretending to be perfect and forces me to live a more honest life, well sort of - ok, let's just settle for it is a risk.



I think we should all risk more, push the boundaries of our comfort, follow our hearts and not let anyone tell us differently. I may not understand Francis' need to write, but I do understand the need to ride - so then again maybe we do understand each other more than we know.