You Will Burn After Reading

Yes, that sounds dramatic, hyperbolic, and uncomfortably zealous in the way that only religious fundamentalists and horror-film fans can stomach. But bear with her. She's working on an idea here. It's a little unformed, like that glimpse of what could be either ghost or gore if you dare to look, or maybe it's nothing at all -- and would that really be such a relief?

What she means is you will be lit from within when you read this. When you read this, this, this, whatever it happens to be when it happens, it will light a fire within you and you will burn for, for, for...

For more. For the same again. For it to be you writing now, for it to be yours. For these incendiary words to be from you. For you and from you and out in the world to be claimed by those who like the feeling of being caught by a flame, to catch a flame and swallow it and let it consume you just enough to be all you want to do and be and feel.

This doesn't happen often, maybe because there are few words that can do such magic, such spontaneous combustion and phoenix-from-flame renewal; or maybe because it's rare to find yourself willing to surrender in the way you need to in order for the spark to catch; or maybe it's because, like anyone who's new or (worse) has forgotten it's not comfortable to lose yourself in a feeling that's not entirely painless, because that's desire, my loves, that's what we all need to ride and reign and release and regain.

Oh, she's on fire alright. She read and she will read and she will keep reading and there will be such a flame in her life that who knows how it will scorch her.

She Must Write

Not for money. No, there's little money, when you break it down (or it breaks you down) in writing these days. She has watched those with real skill, real grit -- those who pull no punches from their keyboards -- struggle to keep the money coming in with their flock of words. She knows there is no money in writing, enough said. So this is not why she must write.

Not for love. Or perhaps she should say, not to get love. Not to get herself in or out of that tempting territory. No longer is she in need of proving what her heart can do. No more will she rearrange the lines of poets and lovers before her to tell her own story of love, to convince herself of her heart's own purpose in beating so so strong. Not for love, not even for love of writing, because this is not the kind of writing she must undertake.

She must write, now more than ever, because she is a writer. Because, regardless of what she has told herself over the last however many several trying years, she has always been a writer. She writes to share her story, to live her story, to connect her story to the stories of others and see her place, her connection, to the larger story that we all share. This is not poetry. This is not philosophy. This is our common truth.

She writes because she is here.