Write.

I am going to write a book.

I’m not sure what I’ll write yet, but if I don’t write a book, someone else will.  Someone who does not write as well as I do, someone who cranks out a formula, someone who is not I.  And that would annoy me more than I am annoyed right now.

I read a short article recently that said the best thing an actor right out of grad school can do for a career is produce original work. I get it. I had a professor once tell me that I would never know if I was a good writer until I started writing for the public.  That’s why I started writing, really. I just felt writing was easy – but I had no benchmark to determine whether it was any good or not.

The thing about writing and me is that writing comes very naturally for me. I do not dare call it easy because it is not. But I definitely have a knack for it. I write fast. I write well. I write correctly. And I always get a little anxiety in my chest when I break the rules, like I did a few sentences earlier by starting the sentence with the word but.

I am very aware of writing and the magical rules – all of them. Grammar, Linguistics, Verse, Meter – they all flow through my veins, like my plasma is made of letters, subjects and verbs.

Believe me, I wish I did anything else as easily. I wish I could box like a champ. I wish I could act like movie star. I wish I could build like a carpenter. But I can not.

I can write. It’s what I do. It’s what makes my way in this world.

Yet…I attempt everything else in the world. I search for happiness everywhere else except the one place I always seem to find it: at my keyboard.

There a few demands about writing that cramp my style, really. For one, you have to turn off the television and read. I love reading, but I love watching television more. I especially love reality television. I live for drama. Another thing, you have to be quiet. I believe this to be true about writers. I talk too much. I talk entirely too much. I say everything I should be writing. I feel it. I know it.  And it makes me sad sometimes because I really, really like talking and being social.

Writers have to be anti-social; it’s the hallmark of production: solitude. A writer has to write, and writing takes time.  A writer has to be alone to write, to think, to try things, to speak a character’s voice out loud, to erase, to curse, to cuss, to celebrate, to cry, to write. I do not like to be alone at all.

Still, the point of this post is writing. I have no more excuses inside of me. I’m not really happy, not at peace. I seem to have lost some creativity along the way these past few years. My priorities are a bit mixed up. I feel wrong in some ways – some things just need righting. And that comes from writing.

So here it goes. I’m not sure what the book will be, or if I am ready for rejection letters, or of I am prepared for success. I have nothing to lose except myself. And since I feel lost right now, I know that I always seem to find myself when I start to do what I do best: write.