Writing Is Torment

And it's amazing.

My friend Jacqueline Dooley and I sometimes do writing prompts together at night. Jackie usually suggests the prompt, and then we freewrite and sometimes share the results. It’s been a while since I’ve been motivated to participate, but I really liked this one she suggested last night. Let’s see what we get. And….go.

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Revisiting the past. The ghosts that haunt. Reliving mistakes that make you cringe. Sometimes it feels like a punishment, this calling. And sometimes, it’s not just the painful memories, but the act of sharing them. The process of writing them. And then the waiting.

Are your words read? Understood? Related to? Are those mistakes met with grace?

Fretting over what to write, what not to write, lack of inspiration, eggshells, opinions, life, love, loss….

But needing, needing, needing. Without creating, you shrivel. To create is to breathe. To write is to live.

Even when you can’t write, you need to. And when you don’t, you feel it. That void. That emptiness. That desperate need.

You can ignore it. And sometimes life dictates that you do. Months may pass. Years. Darkened spots of time when the outlet sits covered in dust, leaving your emotions to bubble furiously under the skin with nowhere to go.

Chaos sets in. Nervous breakdowns. Depression. Your desperate need starved.

What torments a writer more? Facing the ghosts that haunt or those painful periods of no nourishment?

It’s torment to write; it’s torment not to write. So, if it’s torment—why do we do it?

It comes back to the need. And why we need.

Because that release, the outlet, the feelings, the exhilaration, the dance, the fear, and the hunger drive your need like heroin.

Writing is torment.

And it’s amazing.