i always meet people who ask me,

“why the hell do you write.”

“why do you waste your time reading novels.”

well, i don’t have answers to their questions,

because they’re comments...

they end with full stops, not with question marks.

why do i love art?

is it because i love million dollar bills?

but so many great artists died poor. economically.

is it because it helps me heal?

but death and love always hurt. even in literature.

but why do i love art?

i

need

to

answer

it.

because i love listening to stories,

of life.

of people who are lost in the maze of life.

of incidents that i won’t live long enough to experience.

i read to learn.

i read to live.

i write to tell stories,

of my own,

of my beautiful ghosts,

of my dearest love.

if i could tell you what i’ve learnt so far;

a mute girl taught me

how she can’t lie but her life itself was a lie,

a queer cowboy taught me

how life is so much more than tags.

a doctor’s last day at college

taught me not to have any regrets.

a failed artist taught me

the beauty of the world is in its complexity.

a blind guy taught me

how he can see everything, just the way we can unsee.

there are so many stories to be told,

like never before.

i have words.

so many of them.

even if i had just a few;

i’d have shuffled them

switched them,

to write poetry.

why?

Because i want to live life....

When you’re a kid, you’re relatively powerless. Add being an only child, having a painfully bashful predisposition, and having an eccentric personality that you’ve yet to really grow into, let alone embrace—and you have younger me. I had a crippling phobia of ball so gym became a nightmare. It was a required class too, thus I’d often find myself stranded amid a cacophony of balls flying, kids screaming, and teachers perhaps too distracted to manage the chaos. I’d sag off into my corner and watch, hoping for the chaos to keep at bay. Feeling like a coward. Cultivating a complex that would morph and lead to a smatter of other insecurities. At the core was powerlessness. I was small, even for my age. I knew death before I should’ve, maybe. And then again. Again. Again. Powerlessness became a fixture. And there was no friction to be had outside the escapism provided by creativity. Television. Movies. Other people’s fantasies laid out for me to watch and enjoy.

So I tried my hand at drawing up worlds of my own, a bit more intricate than my past scribbles. Being slightly older, I started putting words to my worlds, serious words—keeping record of the movies that played almost constantly behind tired eyes. They’d fall together, in vague semblances of coherence. They’d give shape to characters, dialogues. They’d imbue in my small hands a sense of power, something I was at a loss for in reality. And for however long, I’d immerse myself and play with my friends my allies my words.

Words were a foothold against the hurricane of early preadolescence. I would hold bouquets of dreams between little ears, given life by my hands, if only on paper. I’d create a role model, an alter ego, a nemesis. I’d take the things that scared me, make them a character beholden to my will, and fight back. In my head I had power. My notebooks were the exhibits.

My worlds collected nuance with age. I’d find myself trying to understand rather than vilify. I think watching and reading and writing has expanded and honed my empathy like little else. As a writer, you become every character, however shallow, one-dimensional, or wicked they may be. You try to find the anatomy of an emotion, the color, the flavor.

You learn there will always be beautiful things to do with words, even when you don’t have much to say. You can talk forever about nothing and, if you’re talented and practiced enough, make it beautiful.

Or on the days when you’re at your most charged and electric and genuine, you can hold a body’s worth of emotion in a tiny sentence, and make it say everything. Words are catharsis. Words are release.

I have to write because if I don’t I get down. Bummed. Overwhelmed. It’s just one of those natural, inexplicable drives that I have, and not everyone has it so I can’t expect everyone to understand. I have been through phases where I hate writing as much, if not more, than I love it. That’s probably in part due to my OCD, and in other part due to feeling like I’ve wasted my time. It’s easy to feel like you’re wasting your time when you write your heart out to little or no applause. When the validation just isn’t there. It’s not so much that you want to be the shallow archetype of “rich and famous”, but you want people to appreciate the results of your labor, the baring of your soul. There’s nothing shallow about that, in my opinion. And I understand.

Why did I write, then, back before I had a place to publish?

I guess...hope. It’s how I am—I have to have something to wake up for, something to chase after. To borrow a phrase from Nolan’s Joker, “I’m like a dog chasing cars; I wouldn’t know what to do if I caught one.” It’s the thrill of the chase. I’ve chased recognition since I was young, perhaps too young to even grasp what recognition truly was. All I knew was, whenever the teacher would let me read one of my stories to the class, whenever I’d get to share the thing that I wrote with another person—I don’t think you can really put *that* feeling into words, and I wanted more. Now I’m here and I have 586 followers and that’s amazing to me. But the aspirational side of me tells me to keep going. The day I stop chasing bigger cars is the day I stagnate, and that’s a bit too close to giving up for my tastes.

I found power in the words. I find life in the chase. And really, what more could you ask for?

I realized I was a writer when I was a senior in high school. I'm 43 now, and am just now taking it seriously. I could never find the courage to even try because I was afraid of rejection. It wasn't until last year that I realized I needed to be writing for me. While we all love to hear positive feedback on our creations, that should not be your focus. Your writing is a part of you, who you are. You should be writing for you, and you alone. Who cares what other people think? Find your courage!

I love to write because it takes my mind to a place of stories, miracles, mystery, enchantment, misery, joy, hatred, fascination, question, education, and intrigue.

My mind contols the output, and no one else.

Your story is built on what you see and what you believe. While you write, you're releasing an anger or an emotion that has trembled inside your mind with every waking moment. To surface it to a pen, puts you in control of it's appearance. The way you write your emotions on paper give you the option of keeping it personal or drawing in another mind to capture the output as you saw it. You reading this far symbolizes the effort I used to intrigue the output. I love to write.

Writing is purely an art of instruction.

At first, it was depression. Holding on to a pen rather than a blade and keeping my mind going. Sad stories flowing out like tears on my pillow. Before I wrote, I sat in my room alone, narrating stories to my stuffed animals. I didn't have many friends until I look back at the people in the photo album of my memories. I was never the kid going to sleepovers or hanging out on the weekends with friends or excitedly hanging out friendship bracelets to my friends. I played alone and worried too much and spent an embarrassing amount of time staring at the sun because people told me I shouldn't. I liked to read and decided in third grade that all I could do with my life was tell stories.

The first story I wrote successfully was about a girl helping her brother's mail-order bride and her sister escape her brother's abuse after she finds out that her sister-in-law is pregnant and couldn't bring herself to get an abortion. I weaved together 50,000 words, ut the final period on it, and deleted the whole thing. It was disjointed trash. The story followed me for years, lying in bed and staring at me. It wasn't the right story, but I wanted to tell the stories of those girls. Ohio has the highest rate of sex trafficking in the country. I didn't know that until I escaped this damn country, and my father took to giving me updates.

I got into history a year after I came back from England. Missing the opportunity to hoard English history books is one of my biggest regrets. I sit every night for weeks on end typing out names and dates and events. A long list in blue cursive sits next to me. The last page only has the tail-ends of my findings. Emile Berliner. Irene Manning. Bob Hope. Joe Weber. Lew Fields. Jason Gould. Oscar Hammerstein. William H. West. George H. Cohan. Sam Shubert. Mitzi Gaynor. Lola Mendez. Rowena Granice Steele. Frank Furness. Yvonne De Carlo. I realized that history can be accurate without leaving people out. But we don't. I never understood why. I never understood anything. That why I started writing.

Writing and biology have so much in common. It's all just questions. How can communism work? Why do color tattoos not work on dark skin? Can there be a love story that you can't predict before it even begins? Why are they pushing this vaccine so hard? What made Stalin so mad? Were his shoes too tight? Can you stretch shoes that are too small? Can you unflatten pop? I jot questions down instead of paying attention to the lessons I have to take. School was never my thing, but I never had a chance to say that. I liked to learn and could still relatively still and be relatively quiet so I wasn't a problem. I guess I like to write because I can say and do whatever the hell I want. I write the stories that eight-year-old me wanted to see and ask the questions sixteen-year-old me wanted answered and funnel those damn emotions suffocating eleven-year-old me.

To any inspiring writer, I would recommend you to say and do whatever the hell you want in your writing. Though (as all my professors have come to learn), once you unleash who you want to be on paper, no one will be able to hold you back or stifle you.

In March 2020, I wrote about how I had one more month of Covid-19 to get through before it could all go back to normal. I was wrong. In a long short, autobiographical piece to become typical of me, in April of 2020 I wrote my first piece for Prose in three years. I pressed publish, hoping beyond hope my pain would be recognized by the internet.

March 2020 was a weird month. Fresh out of a psych unit, broken-hearted, and having quit my job (the first day Covid hit the west coast - Seattle - and I thought, whatever, that's like forever from here, what can happen?) I was rather desolate. My sister had cut ties with me, I had no one but myself and a computer screen.

I wrote a poem about cracking eggs against my frying pan and missing, too drunk to care. My roommate, the only other person I was to have contact with for the next three months, asked: "Do you really only have eggs and champagne in our fridge?"

The answer was yes, and not only was I not ashamed, I wrote about it.

And I started getting published.

This is a flash-forward to 2021. So far this year, I've had three pieces of mine published by various magazines. The are short prose link this. And every time I get published, I think: I've shared too much with the world.

I wrote about my sister, and she didn't even care. I sent her a piece I had published, one where I tore our family to shreds. She didn't blink. Or, at least, through the phone it didn't seem like she did. She said, "You know what? When Kim Kardashian wears a million dollar coat, it catches everyone's attention. She's making a statement."

I'm still thinking that one over.

Why do I write? I write because, as Charlie Sheen says on Two and a Half Men, "There are things inside of me I need to kill."

He actually says that while hugging a toilet on the show, drunk and throwing up, but I digress. Perhaps it's even more relevant to me, then.

I write because the things inside of me I need to kill need names written in ink. I plaster my emotions in print, feeling the weight of it all evaporate.

Even if, only after I write, I stop to consider who my writing could potentially hurt, I feel a freedom in that "publish" button. Who knows who will read my stories, who those people are?

If you've gotten this far, perhaps I've succeeded in at least planting a seed of something in you, and you'll take away from this something that makes you feel okay.

I write for myself. Whether to sort out my mood, tell stories I may forget or become warped in the mind; to see progress or regression in my writing. The point of view that is never seen by anyone other than me probably because it was only meant for me to see. Back then there was a drive however now I simply write because I choose to. It helps me so why not? If tough criticism, rejection, or doubt is present then accept it and remember you do it for yourself before anyone else.

Since I was eight years old, the dream of being published & paid for my work, is similar to a relationship with another human being- except, the struggle is within.

My Writing:

*has, come and gone

*returned

*crawled back- begging for mercy- with speeches that have earned me standing ovations.

A eulogy so moving- someone wanted to borrow it?

(weird, I know, but it happened in 1999)

My writing has brought comfort to the grieving, tears of joy to those achieving milestones and recognition to the humble, under appreciated and overlooked.

Although it’s been a long tumultuous relationship with my writing- after 4 decades, I wouldn’t change anything.

Still, unpublished and unpaid-

the deep emotion I can read on their faces...touch’s my soul.

To my disbelief, years later, they still remember.

I’ll never know why...

My writing, does not need me!

I need my writing-

(and sometimes? They do too.)

God Bless ❤️

Benz 5:30:21

I often ask myself the same question, especially since I keep most of my writings to myself. I even bought a domain to start a blog and haven't posted a single thing. To afraid of the insults to be vulnerable and put my words out there.

Regardless of that, first off I write to heal. To let out all my pain, sadness, anger and disappointment of self and humanity. I write mostly because I am filled with sadness and pain that never eases or fades. Tears fall daily from my eyes and most of the time I couldn't tell you why other than my heart and soul aches in a way I can't write on paper.

Secondly, I write in hopes to reach someone who is aching like me. To let them know we are all alone and feeling lonely. I want to touch a heart or soul of someone who is at the point of giving up and ending their suffering. I want to be the light in someones life that gives them hope in that exact moment they need it.

I live my life with BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) struggling to make it through each day. I am judge, to difficult to be around, and have no interpersonal relationships so I know lonely. I know I am no John Gresham, shit I an not even a Dr. Seuss, but writing has saved me and I will continue regardless if I reach zero people of million.

#lonely #keepwriting #makeadifference

I'm not fully sure what began my writing career all those years ago, fourth grade, but I think it was my amazing teacher, she is the best one I have ever had, and the fact that it was the year I started being able to delve deeper into books. I was now able to read chapter books with dozens of chapters, and deep concepts. Therefore my imagination grew and grew, until it started to grow into characters who needed a place to live and be free. Those rejected or those who were suffering could find a way to begin anew. From there it turned into writing. Some add ons to favorite books, some completely new. Over the years writing has turned, not only, into a way to create something new, but to support me when I have a bad day or wan't to get my feelings out, but they get stuck inside.

When someone says they don't like my writing, it just means I want to make it better, to show them I am better than them and can do it. I'm very competitive. And I suppose I think that in my head I'm better than most writers, mainly because my imagination is so wide. (No offence to anyone)

Since the question is why do I keep writing, I suppose it is mainly because I want books and series to go on. When I finish a book and I get that feeling that I need more, I can just write it. Or even because of the books I read. I may read one book and it gives me the idea to start a story. So I start a story, but then I get a new idea, and I start a story on that. Which means I never get bored, and it never gets dull.

Since I found prose a few months ago, I now have another reason to continue. The dream I've always had of other people seeing my writing besides close friends and family, can now come true. It also makes the path to becoming an author more clear.

For those interested in some of my stories, check my profile, you will be able to find one about a horse named Hawk, and one called "The Return Of Silvia," Which is the book I'm currently working on. If you want to see even more, just let me know, one of these days you might see some more of my older work appearing. :)