Thursday, December 15, 2011




Recently a good friend asked me, ‘Why do you write, and why is it so important to you?’

Who knows why we do the things we do? Especially writing, that one profession that people roll their eyes at when you happen to mention that it’s your passion. So instead of going into a long-winded explanation of why I write and why it’s so important to me, I’ll give you a quick bullet list of reasons (some may echo yours, some may not)




So, Why Do I Write and Why is it So Important to Me?


1) To paraphrase Stephen King, ‘Why do you assume I have a choice?’

2) I have voices in my head that won’t shut up. 

3) To kill the pain.

4) To still the demons.

5) I have things I want to say and I’ll get arrested if I say them out loud.

6) Because I have stories to tell, and adventures to go on.

7) I dream up characters and they haunt me until I put them down on paper.

8) I’m one of those people who need to express themselves or the top of their head blows off.

9) To join the conversation.

10) Because I’m full of regrets.

11) I have issues and stuff to work out.

12) I’m melancholy by nature, and moody. A writer! 

13) I’m good at it; I enjoy it, so what the hell. Why not?

14) I’m a control freak and writing lets me be in charge of everything.

15) With all these crazy thoughts in my head, I either put them down on paper, or check myself into a psychiatric ward. 

16) Because I just can’t help it? 

17) Because I FEEL like a writer. 

18) My mind naturally goes there. 


19) Because I talk too much, and I finally decided to talk on paper instead, to the relief of all those around me.


20) Why do I write? Because it's either that or become a Longshoreman.

21) Because those pretty little things floating around in my transom look better on paper. 

22) Because I'm an attention whore.  There, I said it.





Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Monday, December 12, 2011




Coffee fueled invectives
   Stained against the pages
Burning my forked tongue
  With half-mumble iterations

Oh how they howl
   See how they run
Half-baked exhortation
Scribbled by moonlight, or by sun
Making no sense of my neurons
   A million thoughts stuffed in a sack
Hail to thee oh chaotic process
   Electromagnetic ink stained flits
Straight from the mess

Scribbled  thoughts, whereabouts unknown
   Wired, alive; they deviate, wander and lose themselves  
Through fields of the imagined places whose denizens wander;
Wander town to town
Straight from the horse’s mouth;
   What is written on the subway walls?
Turn on the light and you will see
   Ecstasy, Symmetry, Poetry

The internal struggle; the last gasp;
   The last desperate attempt,
one last swing;
   One last kick at the can;
One more fabulous fling;
    I weigh the prose and cons;
The lights are down, it’s the empty stage;
   There was the idea, the poor struggling fetus;
Born in the ether, died on the page

Only, reborn somehow;
   Reborn; re-gifted; resurrected
Those penumbral lines, those darlings murdered
   Those treasures we find, bury, and find again
Those roads gone further

I have but one life to give; one thing for the pain;
    Inspiration locked in a trunk
And the key down the drain

Two thoughts diverged in a wood
   And I took the one less thunk

~The Writers Den on Twitter~

~The Writers Den on Twitter~
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