Being the Writer I Am

• Knowing that a great blog post today means a reader might be disappointed tomorrow.
• Being okay with that because I know they might still come back to see what else I have to say.
• Writing about a character's problems and hoping that people don't think I'm that character.
• Sometimes wishing people could know I am some of my characters.
• Not being able to read anything but what I'm working on because I don't want to mimic another writer's voice.
• Feeling like no one else understands what I'm going through while working on a story.
• Realizing that I sort of like that no one else understands what I'm going through while working on a story.
• Picking up pieces of characters from people I meet and using them in a story.
• Thinking of all the stories that will die with me if I don't get them written down.
• Letting that last thought motivate me to write those stories down.
• Worrying that, since I am so broke, I should be doing something other than writing.
• Knowing that, no matter what, writing means so much to me that I'd rather die of being broke than I would to die of not writing.
• Knowing that there are a some people who will understand that.
• Knowing that not many people will ever understand that.
• Usually not really giving a damn whether or not people will ever understand that.
• Wanting to smoke when I am writing, even though I no longer smoke.
• Falling so in love with my own characters that it's hard to let them be who they need to be.
• Knowing that, since I never had kids, my stories will be what tells the future I was here, and mattered.
• Writing about people I want to fall in love with, be friends with, go out for drinks with, and tell my secrets to in the dark.
• Wishing my mother could be here when I finally have my name printed on a hardback book.
• Knowing that my mother *is* here, in some way, whenever I am writing all these stories.
• Getting into such a writing mania that nothing else matters: not typos or grammar or language. 
• Knowing that there will be time enough for all of that to matter once I've freed the story from my heart.
• Having known people that become inspiration for my stories.
• Knowing that I might one day meet someone I thought only existed in my stories.
• Being able to say "my stories".
• Having worlds I've created to escape to when the world around me isn't everything I want it to be.
• Knowing that I might not be accepted and celebrated as writer until I've been dead and gone for hundreds of years.
• Being mostly okay with that because being known and celebrated doesn't matter as much as the writing does.
• Not wanting to be like any of my favorite authors, but wanting to be someone they'd want to be.
• Dreaming dreams that I can put down in words for other people to read about.
• Knowing that, for all my weaknesses, I have something so good in me that writing is the only way to express it.
• Sometimes, editing out of my stories things that I think reveal too much of who I am.
• Putting those things back in the story because I realize it's okay to reveal who I am because it's okay to be who I am.
• Being so lonely when I am writing that I have to enter the company of my characters.
• Turning depression, frustration, fear and anxiety to my advantage by writing.
• Knowing that, because I write, I am part of a group of very special people.
• Knowing that, just as I have fallen in love with creative people I've only met through their work, someone is going to fall in love with me.
• Knowing that that's a perfecty good thing.
• Feeling like I've been unplugged from the Heavens when I come out of the dream state that is writing.
• Being thankful to God that he gave me this urge to express myself and a way to do it.
• Knowing that there are people reading all this who understand everything I am saying.

And that's what it means to me to be the #writer I am. That's what it means to be me.

Peace

--Free