30 days in November 15...

Today is:

 I love to write day

Started in 2002 by author John Riddle, the day is for everyone to express their thoughts and feelings with the help of the pen. Many famous authors have agreed that the first step to creating a good book is to simply pick up the pen. Well, they could be right as the world is full of authors and even fuller of books.

I don’t really trust anyone who says that they love to write. People do it for any number of reasons and, whilst I am sure that the love of the activity itself is partly why they do it, there has to more to it than that for many of them.

Most of the reasons why I write have nothing to do with love. I do it to have a voice, to let people know what I am thinking, to amuse, as an academic exercise sometimes, but mostly because I have to.

Each day I must write a couple of hundred words at least. They usually end up here in one form or another, moving down from my head, into my fingers, onto my screen, then eventually they travel out into the big wide world to have their own lives and end up wherever they may.

Some end up nowhere, unread by anyone but me. Others end up in the mind of others, sparking a thought, anger, sometimes a gasp, occasionally a tear. It doesn’t really bother me either way (well almost), this blog has always been about me. It’s partly record, partly autobiography, partly fiction, some poetry, some ranting, but most of all a release.

In the years I’ve been writing, the millions of words I’ve written, I have learnt more about myself than in all the time that went before. The act of asking myself questions, forcing myself to answer them honestly, putting them somewhere other than simply allowing them to mill around in my mind for my small life’s eternity has been cathartic (a word I used to scoff at but now understand).

Or course it has led me to some bad places, a lot of dead ends, and has sometimes resulted in trouble; people on the doorstep shouting at me, a call or two from the police, negative feedback and a couple of trolls, but I can’t stop doing it despite all of this.

I may not love writing, but I certainly need it. It is so ingrained in my psyche that if I stopped I’m not even sure that I would know who I am. I am this blog and this blog is me. I give it life and in return it gives me life and allows my life to reside within it for ever, it makes me immortal. 

To me that seems like a fair trade.