Many writers claim that they love to write, that their whole lives they could do this thing called writing and writing and writing some more.
But writing is torture. So is not writing. The only feeling that’s truly liberating is having written.
When you start on a blank page, you just don’t know what to write. You get distracted, opening your Facebook account and replying to messages. You try to search for inspiration and read ten different articles which consume thirty minutes of your supposed writing time. Then when the lightning strikes and all you want to do is write, you don’t know if whether this would be received widely by the people. You don’t know if what you write about is worth reading.
You constantly doubt yourself during the whole process, but with enough effort, you persevere. You persevere in what Stephen King labels as “writing with the door closed”.
But then you finish a writing. And now, it’s time to rewrite them. It’s time to shake the words from ground below, cutting some paragraphs mercilessly and adding explanation here and there to make it a coherent piece.
After all is said and done, whether or not a piece is finished or not, you hit the publish button.
It’s good, isn’t it? Having written.
But having written, at times, means basking in the previous glory. Having written, sometimes, means as a justification to not create much more. Having written is a great feeling. It’s a wonderful feeling.
But to us artists, it’s never enough to just having written.
Perhaps, perhaps, the journey on writing is even much more beautiful. The feeling of the words on the tip of your fingers. The melody of the plot that runs in your head. The way your senses, your feelings shake when thinking of a story being birthed into the world.
Perhaps, perhaps, that’s why we are always addicted to this thing called writing. Creating. Because not writing and having written do not cut it. We feel most alive when we write.
Because that’s where the magic happens.
Photo by Elescir, Creative Commons.
