Musings

What are writers made of?

     Flights of fancy …

     Random bits of lyricism …

     Dialogue chattering in the back of their skulls …

     Anguish as sharp as barbed wire …

     Memories — good and bad — woven in strands that stretch across time …

     Drive, determination, ambition, and dreams — always dreams …

     The fragility of a bruised rose petal …

     The toughness to keep on …

     Empathy …

     Compassion …

     Cruelty …

     The belief and wonder of a child …

     The ability to wander back in time or leap to the future …

     The capacity to hope …

     The tendency to despair …

     The willingness to gamble …

     Enough vanity to publish …

     Enough faith to persevere …

     Enough doubt to always be asking, Does it work, does it work, does it work?

Where do we come from, we writers?

What shapes us?  What molds us?  What in our DNA chain spins the wheel of destiny that whispers, Spend your life among words?

How many of us listen to the little voice that entices, luring us through a portal of imagination?

How many of us turn aside at the gate of, "There's no living to be made from it?"

How much talent sputters to a standstill on the stony road of practice?

There are so many barriers, obstacles, and gatekeepers before writers.  Some keep marching.  They toil up the mountain of craftsmanship.  They knock on the door of publication and keep knocking until it opens.

Shakespeare had a patron.  We have day-jobs.  We find a way to eat so that we can go on plotting and designing characters.

Is it worth it?

As much as breathing.