Good question.
It’s the strangest thing. I would have never imagined myself to be a writer 3 years ago.
Two years ago I decided to make a lifestyle change and since I don’t really enjoy TV but do read voraciously, somehow I got it into my mind that I would write a book. So I went and bought a couple of how-to books.
But it wasn’t until about a year ago that I really became serious about it.
Now, sadly, my writing has become my addiction. It has grown until it now eclipses almost everything else in my life! I still shake my head over it. I really don’t know how it happened.
It started simply enough. I figured what could it hurt? A few words here, a few words there – I mean, just whenever I was bored, of course. No problem. Just a harmless little pastime, a dalliance. I could quit anytime, I told myself.
But soon words were not enough. Next thing you know, I was doing clauses and sentences and then, before long, I was up to doing whole paragraphs a day.
Well, I’m sure we’ve all seen this sad story before. Yes, I know – I was a fool. Proud and arrogant and unknowing, I thought I could handle it. I thought I could control it. I can admit it now, upright and freely, I was wrong.
Eventually paragraphs could not sustain me any longer. I began writing pages and pages. I could not help myself! Into the night I would sit huddled before my screen, pounding away at the keyboard like a madman, filled with glee as my dark cravings were satisfied.
And yet my desire still consumed me. I began to spend more and more time inside. Friends began to notice the startling change in me. I missed appointments. Didn’t answer calls. Made excuses as to why I couldn’t go out like I used to. I hid it from friends and family. I didn’t have a problem, I swore to myself. Looking back, I can see now that I was in denial.
Soon it wasn’t enough that I was staying up later than I should be, pursuing my habit, missing badly needed sleep and ignoring other duties I should have been attending to. I began carrying a notebook also, where I would jot down words, phrases and ideas; bits and pieces for my story – nothing to gorge me, mind you, just enough to whet my appetite until I could sit down for a proper fix.
Hahahahaha. Yes, I know. You are sitting there, reading my words and thinking:
“You blind fool! Did you not know the power that words contain?
Singly they seem harmless - delightful and beguiling as a puppy. But let them gather in numbers and before you know it, they will sweep you off your feet and carry you away to places you never dreamed of. They will enter your mind and take root, to eventually bear strange, new fruit. They will inspire new ideas and beliefs, and inflict upon you emotions that you might have wished better left undisturbed.
O fool of fools - that is not even the worst of it! For if their insidious grasp enters deeply enough they will build within you, like steam within a kettle, until they burst forth from you at odd hours of the night, unbidden. Until they make of you a vessel for their own propagation! Until they consume you and make you a puppet of their will!!!
Did you not know!!”
No I didn’t. God help me, I didn’t.
And so now I sit here, hopeless. Merely a vessel for these words which I, in my madness, foolishly let grow within me - until eventually I loose them upon an unsuspecting world.
Like a flower that throws it’s seeds into the wind to hopefully find root in fertile soil elsewhere.
Like a tree that drops its fruit, its labours of love, to the ground to one day be picked up and enjoyed by anyl who pass by.
They control me now. They dictate my whims and desires.
O, turn away foolish reader. Turn away from these words now, before it is too late. Before your mind ingests them and they become enmeshed in your soul and take control of your life.
Before you become (sob!) a writer…..