To be a writer is to be a thinker, is to be a dreamer, is to be a procrastinator, is to be a humorist, is to be a sociologist, is to be opinionated, is to be silent, is to be wordy, is to be wrong sometimes, and is to hit the nail directly on the head, others.
To be a writer is to bleed, is to purge, is to hold back for nuance, is to wonder, is to second-guess, is to edit and cut, is to self criticize, is to triumph, elated, when the words, the succulent words, are birthed brilliantly, precisely, and remarkably as planned.
To be a writer is to listen, is to watch, is to feel, is to grow passionate, is to yield, is to worry about what you have set to paper because what is written can not be erased for then it forgets how to be honest. To be a writer is to become ever more indifferent concerning the interpretation of your words so that you may write with reckless, fearless, ceaseless abandon.
To be a writer is to tap volumes from a mere idea, is to expand the view of those not looking, is to engage the senses so they hear the drip, smell the burning wood, feel the havoc wreaked. To be writer is to set them all upon a journey, a rich but feverish path that draws emotion, and renders tears, especially at the end of the story when the little child dies or the mother returns, too late, too late, or both of these things happen on the same damn page. How could you not cry? How could you not soak the pages?
And so you write, and you write again, to uncover, to expel, to release your hopes and your own fiction, your fears and your deeply held truths. You drop them all, your words, squarely in the center, and watch as they ripple, as they widen and roll, then diminish to nothing, they fade, how they fade, and are but some smudges, on a small piece of paper, a memory, your memory, at most.