Writing.

I am not a writer by nature.

Now, now, pick your jaw up off the floor, what I am saying is true. I never liked English. Well, I never liked writing. It wasn't something that was inside of me...except, maybe, when I was 16 and hormonal and wanted to be unhappy. So I wrote poetry. Bad poetry. 16-year old sad girl poetry. And I took honors English classes.

Later - much later - I met some friends who showed me how to read books for more than just the story. They taught me to enjoy the storytelling. They saw artistry in a sentence -- not just in what was conveyed but how it was written. When I saw how masterfully people put words together, I realized I wanted to write like that. I wanted to express ideas deliciously. I wanted to stir up emotions merely by word choice. And a well-placed period...and lots and lots of ellipses.

So I practiced. Thank you, my dear compassionate readers. I found inspiration and I mimicked it. Don't misunderstand me, I still don't claim to be a "writer". Writing, for me, is not a rush of eloquent statements -- a hurried purge. Nor is it constant brilliance. It's much more methodical. I put down some thoughts. I put down some more. I reorder them, piece them together, go over it and over it and over it, change something here, add something there. I come back day after day until my battered Scrabble board is an accurate rendering of what's jumbled in my head-heart -- the form of which is unclear until I give it shape outside my insides.

The reason I still write, despite my concentrated efforts, is because I've come to appreciate writing as an exploratory catharsis. I've produced maybe 3 worthwhile pieces in all my years of writing...and one of those was a vocabulary exercise in 2nd grade...but they are my Frankenstein thoughts and my deliberate words.

What I write may not be much but it's mine.