I write because I have to. Because if I don’t, it would feel as if I wasn’t being my real true self. A part of me is not truly living, unless I am also writing.
That may feel dramatic, but for me, writing started as soon as I was able to form sentences on my own. In middle school, I would sit on my bed with a journal and fill it nightly with melodramatic poems. I took my first creative writing class as a sophomore at Agoura High School. Mrs. Dobrowski was her name.
One of my first, vivid memories of me writing was staying up way past my bedtime tap tap tapping away on the computer that sat in my closet. It was one of the “first computers” that people were buying for their homes so it took up about ¼ of my closet!
I would pull a wooden desk chair up to it and craft short stories into the wee hours of the morning. Eventually, my mom would come in at some point and scold me for being up too late on a school night.
But ‘tis was the writer’s life! Didn’t all suffering writers stay up too late, nurturing their works of word art? I was sure they did.
Fast forward to now, today for example. My life is so much different from then. I no longer have the luxury of staying up late to “nurture my craft.” By the end of the day I’m burnt out from the get the kids to school routine & working full time in between. After work, it’s homework, reading books and practicing for spelling tests for the older one. And all the while, the younger one is running around screaming for attention – trying to “read” books too.
So instead, I wake up early and write in the quiet stillness of the morning. After my husband has left for work and before the girls have woken up.
I only have about an hour to write before I have to start the getting ready for work and school routine – but to me, it’s kind of like working out. It’s an hour that is totally, just for me.
