by Lisa Beach

Created on: August 15, 2008   Last Updated: September 24, 2008

I think most writers would agree that we write because we are COMPELLED to, for many different reasons. Loved ones or classmates may laugh, chide that we will NEVER be published, so what's the point. The point is that creativity begets creativity. Understanding words, and the way they can be molded to express our thoughts is why we write. Knowing or suspecting we were BORN to write is what makes us tick. We couldn't give up our love for writing even if we were headed for a cliff into nothingness.

At age ten I was compelled to write. Other little girls my age wanted to be ballet dancers or princesses. Not ME. My lifetime ambition was to be a writer; I wanted people to read my stories, [which were currently floating in my head] and say "How did you DO that? It's like I was really there!" I wouldn't mind WRITING about ballet dancers and princesses, but something bad would have to befall them, so a handsome young hero could save them in the end.

Back then I had a vague idea of how words worked, but it wasn't until I hit my mid-teens that I funneled that creativity into a workable form. When I was fifteen, I told Mom I wanted a DICTIONARY for Christmas! Naturally, she looked at me like I'd lost my mind. One day, perhaps to prove I COULD write, I handed a short story I'd written, [SLAVED over] to my dad for him to read. He read it, and like Mom, looked at me like I'd lost my mind. Only years later was I told the number one rule of writing is to never let family or friends read your stuff.

Jump ahead numerous years, and I'm getting all A's in anything even remotely related to English. I'm obsessed with words; getting each sentence just right; working on using more sophisticated words and complex sentences, and am DETERMINED to be a writer. I majored in Creative Writing, and minored in Communications. Even the 100 page thesis I had to write to earn my Masters [and it was a REAL bear to write] was fun.

After graduating, NOTHING could stop me. And if I was told I had to stop writing or fall off that cliff into nothingness, I just would have typed faster, the closer I got to its edge. Like a freight train doing 90mph, some things just cannot be stopped, and my unwavering "do-it-or-die" desire to choose just the right phrase would have carried me across that nothingness to the other side. Even now I am one with the Universe if my fingers are at my keyboard. I hear nothing when I am "in the zone".

My poetry whispers sunny songs or languid laments; characters from my novel are frantic to be free; they dislike it mightily when I get Writer's Block, and I can see why. Having sputtering nothings typed across my PC screen is frustrating and annoying to put it mildly. It's even MORE frustrating when they are MY fingers; certainly gibberish isn't what I want.

But overall, I love what I do, and to be able to do it any time I want is fabulous. I have a whirling dervish of words and ideas in this creative mind of mine; I am their portal of expression: The least I can do is set them free. As Billy Crystal said in the movie Throw Mama From The Train, "A writer writes: always."

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