Did you ever realize how much a kind word can mean to a total stranger?
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I went to Vegas once because it’s supposed to be Disneyland for grownups. It wasn’t. Not for me, at least, but that’s a whole other story.
On the way home, the plane had to hold for bad weather for so long we ran out of fuel and had to make a crash landing and missed the runway in the blizzard, which was scary as hell and didn’t add much to the experience.
Anyway, while I was in Vegas, I saw someone hit the jackpot.
Coins pouring out of the machine and the lady was laughing and crying at the same time and hopping around in the way children do when they’ve waited too long to use the bathroom because oh my God, you hope and play and mostly walk away unfulfilled, but that one time, that one crazy time — that’s why you keep doing it, I guess.
Sometimes writing feels a lot like gambling...
You write that one article that came out of nowhere and most likely it’s not the one you slaved over for 7 damn hours, and then it goes wild and you get 5.8K views and 2.8K likes and for a day or two you’re not invisible.
And then — poof — you’re invisible again.
Despite all the people who line up daily to tell us how to succeed at writing, there’s no formula that works for everyone. It’s a gamble. Every single time.
If you’re one of those folks with 70.1K followers, I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to we average, who don’t hit publish and get 500 hearts in one hour.
Why do we do it? Because we must.
Writers write because we must. Because we can’t “not” write.
I suppose it’s like that for all creatives.
Artists paint because they must.
Musicians play because they must.
Composers compose because they must.
Sometimes, I’ll be in the middle of some random thing, having a shower or trying to go the hell to sleep already and the damn words won’t leave me alone until I write them down.
Is there anyone else but a writer who’d be sitting awake in bed at 2 am, bleary eyed and writing down words…
