I am a writer...

I am a writer. What does that mean? I really don't know, but sometimes I just feel this undeniable urge to write. ( I found a quote by Thomas Mann, who said that "a writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." That sums it up well!) Sometimes what flows from my pen is actually pretty good, and at other times it is not.

One of my favorite things to do is write, although I took a long break from it recently. If you know me personally, you know I am usually a very quiet, shy person. I'll never forget my classmates back in elementary school asking my mother if I knew how to talk. By the time I was a teenager, I discovered that I could better express myself through written words.

Even though I have a love and desire for writing, it doesn't always come naturally. It's more like giving birth. Instead of labor pains, I have writing pains. The whole writing process can be very frustrating and emotionally draining. You pour your life, emotion, and passion into a poem or piece of literature onto a piece of paper, and then you can take a breath... until you let someone else read it. You can only hope it will be as beautiful to them as it is to you, if that is even possible.

I find it difficult to just sit down and write at anytime. I need first something to write about, and it has to bounce around in my head for a while before I can even try to write about it. Some of my best work has come after major events or tragedies in my life: the shootings at Columbine, the death of my father, becoming a believer in Yeshua, meeting the man I would marry...

Now that I have begun blogging, it is amazing how ideas come to me throughout the day. It's putting the words together in a coherent manner to go with the idea that is the hard part, but it gets done somehow. W. Somerset Maugham said that "we do not write because we want to; we write because we have to" . So be it...