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.