On Why Writing Is So Damn Hard

Let me be clear, I breathe the written word. It is my life force, my prana, my life purpose, my escape, my clarity. It is also my most complicated, vicious, taxing, and painful relationship. Nothing comes even close to the challenge a devotion to writing inflicts upon me at every turn.

Writing is so damn hard.

While that may come off as me prepping for a whiny diatribe on the travails of the writer’s life, it actually constitutes me launching into a bit of a love poem (I SUCK at poetry and do not pretend to have any training in it whatsoever. So, indulge me):

 

Oh word that I write

Bringing to life so many wishes.

Oh word that I write

How you keep me from doing the dishes.

Every day I sit and stare and think of a million other things to do.

Then, with a whisper, a pull, and a shove, you force me to feel something that draws me back to you.

No laundry is done. Take-out pizza for dinner again tonight.

I made my kid walk home by herself

because you and I are having a fight.

Characters haunt my dreams

Settings drive me to call my travel agent friend.

Yet we all know the balance of my bank account

means that little fantasy has to end.

Oh word that I write

does it count to make a writing playlist on Spotify instead of banging out Chapter 3?

Oh word that I write

It’s been eight hours staring at you. I have to pee.

Why do you tease me like this?

Why do you always get your way?

Oh word that I write

How I need you

To make sense of my life every day.