Writing and the Strange People Who Write

From a purely physical perspective, writing is a wholly unhealthy endeavor.  You sit in front of a computer or keyboard pecking away, or conducting research to make your story, plot, or theme richer and more enjoyable for your targeted reader.  Your waistline tends to grow, your eyesight suffers, and you largely ignore those you love (and everything outside the scope of the story and computer) in order to convey the strange ideas and concepts that swirl in your head like Dorothy's house as it was scooped up by that F-5 tornado on the Kansas plains.

I've had the good fortune to meet a large number of authors in my lifetime, and each is rife with quirkiness and peculiar personality traits that most would find, well, quirky.  Personally, I find those traits interesting and telling about the individual's cognitive abilities, but hey, I guess I suffer from a form of  mild quirkiness too.

That said, I believe writers work at "the craft" for many different reasons: it's a form of therapy for many; there's a burning desire to tell a story that has been floating around in their brain for some time; in some, there is the OCD-ishness that will not rest until their thoughts have been properly communicated; and still, there are those who relish in the glow of others telling them how wonderful their work is (this narcissistic personality trait is rarely successful, but I wanted to point out that it does exist in the stratosphere of writing personalities).

For me, there's a combination of some of the things listed above that drives me to write--the therapeutic nature of expression and the sharing of what creativity God has given me with others, or my OCD nature that seeks out miniscule mistakes, usually post-mortem, endured by those tolerant souls who most often give me a pass for my inconsistencies and misgivings, and the burning need to see where the story will lead.  I often write without an end in mind--I've found that it changes several times as the story develops, so I prefer to begin with a notion, build on that, and hopefully watch it blossom into something recognizably cohesive.

Finally, there is the finished product...that tangible something you are happy to share with others, all the while hoping they enjoy those crazy thoughts that swam through your mind as you drafted the first of many manuscripts that would eventually morph into what they now hold in their hands.

And for me, there's this--smiling along with a few young men and women who were happy to buy this book of mine, although I doubt they were nearly as excited as I was to meet them.  These photos had little to do with my need to create a story, but I promise you, they are motivation for the second.

Be well and at peace.