avalonsmistress.com

After a discussion in my first writing lecture on prose about writing, one of the first points to come up was, to paraphrase, writing is a duty, or a necessity.

Taken literally, a couple of our class said that it was very pessimistic.
Hate to break it to you, but writing IS NOT the happy ‘hearts and flowers’ courting muses, and smiling all the time, easy writing, easier times that its been romanticised into.

Writers are cursed.
Now, yes, that’s also pessimistic.  Of course it is.   We’re cursed. 
Cursed because we can’t - really – switch off.  Writers just don’t think like other people – we take innocuous comments, store them in a subconscious area somewhere in our mind, and at some point, like feeding part of an equation into a computer, we extrapolate, we ‘solve’ the rest, and we spit it straight back out.
Our social lives also suffer.  Writers, by their nature, aren’t particularly social – though we want the spotlight, we want it for what WE are saying.  WE, as writers, generally don’t want to share, subvert, or even pull an iota of that attention from our works.
Well, most of us anyway – there’s some exceptions of course.
More to the point, most of us don’t actually have any sort of social life.  We write whilst our favorite programs are on – and most writers are incredible, amazing multi-taskers.  We read in the bath – or on the bus – or waiting in the playground for our kids. 
Drinks with friends USUALLY involve a note-pad and pen – shopping with kids has lots of mental conversations between characters.  In house socializing is either fuel for writing (role-playing – a cross between playing a game and ad-lib acting) or MORE writing.  We can’t ever stop thinking about it.

And in that way, its a blessing too.

Now, call me odd, (it happens all the time) but I’m not really one for accepting negatives.  You can’t go through life and consider the ‘worst’ side without at least weighing it up against the bits that it gives you.  And fair enough, if you’re not getting at least as much out as you’re putting in, drop it like a lead balloon.

The blessings for writers are we’re never alone, and never – really – bored.  We see the world differently, and that opens doors.  OK, our social life suffers and our work is more important, in many ways, than we are, we have to learn to multi-task, we have to sneak and skulk our writing in around everything else, and our housework may…does….will suffer.  But when it comes down to it we do it because we MUST.  It might seem like another of the ‘curse’ list, but its not.  Its a huge blessing.  We’re given a reason for being – a way to entice, incite, soothe, salvage, dream and realize things for others.  We are the voice of countless people that are silent – through choice, or otherwise.  We, like the writing, just ARE.

And for that – I’ll take the curse anytime.