the urge to write

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
- E.L. Doctorow


I didn't choose to become a writer. Belive me - the writing chased after me.

When I was younger, not sure how old * I began narrating my life. I don't know how old I was or what grade I was in, but I remember I was in Hofstra University's indoor swimming pool with my mom, and I was walking through the hallway to the locker room. Right then and therem I decided my life would be like a book, and I would have to narrate it.

Strange, huh?

But in essence, that's what happened, to the point where I even started narrating stories that had nothing to do with me, but could have something to do with me. It was a child's imagination dictated with an author's intent.

Everywhere I turned I wanted to write about something, create something, and especially in my head, where the possibilities were great and many.

Unless you are a writer, it's hard to understand what it's like to be flooded with ideas, plot lines, characters, phrases, titles, themes, symbols, names, places, and the like on a constant basis AND want to put it all on paper. The struggle between creative inspiration and physical output is never ending because just as soon you've written down one opening sentence, two more have emerged and for completely different, unrelated stoies.

How do you put just one book on paper when you have 10 semi-completed ones in your head?

The answer is carefully. . . very, very carefully

* Contrary to all those people who claim they can tell you the exact moment, place, date, year, and weather forecast when they "did something" or realized something, it's not always realistically possible. How many nine-year-olds remember what they did when they were six? Yet every adult with a boring story to tell remembers that they were exactly six years old when they first knew they wanted to work on, say, Wall Street. Not happening, people, just not happening.