No One Wants This

Let me impart upon you a little nugget of wisdom: no one wants to be an author or an artist. As an author myself, I feel I can tell you this. No one wants the writer's block or the oddly judgemental blinking cursor on a new word document. No one wants the overwhelming feeling you get looking at a blank canvas or opening a new sketchbook and knowing that you're the one who has to make things come from that. 

To me, it's more like a need. I have so much inside my head that if I don't get it out in one way or another then surely I'll explode. I can't draw to save my life and my talents with a pen are debatable - to me, not the people who have literally threatened to fight me over this skill I seem to have stumbled upon. Writing, drawing, whatever creative path you pursue, you follow that broken up road because you need to. Because something in you is calling out for the destination, even if you don't know where or what that may be. It can come with wants, sure, but we all know that deep down, it's a visceral sort of thing. You have to create or it feels like something is missing and, if you're anything like me, you try various different methods until you land on what it is that fills that void. 

For me, it's writing. It's inspiring others. It's creating worlds and people and scenarios from absolutely nothing. For me, it's gathering inspiration from some random photo I see on the internet or from that particular section in a song that makes me feel alive. It's creating playlist upon playlist, soundtracking my work or dancing along to those made by someone else, screaming my writer's block out with the lyrics of some Hunter Hayes song. It's the clacking of the mechanical keyboard or the sound a typewriter filling me with joy and motivation. It's getting 20 books at the library and bathing in the weird looks people give me as I look at my newly gathered horde of inspiration, whatever the topic is this go round. For me, it's the look on someone's face as they read my work, the reactions they have. It's the criticisms and the praise, it's the words creating worlds, it's the feeling you get at seeing something that once only existed in your head being out there for the world to see.

I don't want to be an author, no. I need it. I need it more than I need to breathe, more than I care to admit. And if you write, if you draw, if you create at all, I'm sure you'll agree with me.