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To say I live for writing is not so true as to say that writing is, for me, a source of life. I have an urge to put words together in a coherent order, and this urge cannot be ignored. Words are food for my soul, and the creative juices flow out my fingertips as the ink flows from an expensive gel pen.

When I have made a good phrase, I wonder sometimes whether it truly comes from me or if I am the victim of possession by some angel, fallen or holy. I bake a pie or a cake and I love to thus make people happy, but when my creative efforts produce a story, that effect is much longer lasting and farther reaching.

I do not want immortality, for I would wish for death ere long. However, I reach for this very thing when I write. I want to be remembered for my words many long decades after my bones crumple to dust. This dream visits me over and over again, and I yearn for the day when I may stand should to shoulder with my literary heroes as an equal, not bow before their utter magnificence as a sign of great respect. I have books in my library on how to reach this goal, but only very rarely do I follow their advice.

I am not putting my main effort towards becoming an immortalized author. If anything, I am putting my main effort towards becoming a homicide detective. My career path is laid out for me in the direction of forensic science; I have but to follow it.

I wonder if I have chosen the right path. I hope for a time, perhaps far in the future, when I live solely from my writing, though I know it may not come. I do know I will never quit writing. I cannot. To do so, to consider such an idea, is as the kiss of death to my very soul, for even to think of quitting drains away my strength of will to continue living. What is life if I do not record these troublesome thoughts? What is life if I cannot pursue to the end that idea, write out that title, follow that character even unto his or her triumph or demise? What is life without a way to voice my opinions, to state my reasons, to explain everything and anything to everyone willing to listen? And most importantly, what is life if I cannot reply to the writings of others? To meet argument for argument, fiction for fiction, fact for fact, poem for poem?

No, I will write, and I will keep on writing, for my very blood is verily ink. Perhaps no one will read my writing; perhaps it will not make me immortal; nonetheless, I cannot quit. When I write for my eyes only, still do I find the release, the comfort, the joy, the sorrow, of writing for others to read. The words I pen may never find their way into great literary anthologies; I may never be mentioned in any textbook. But if, somewhere along the line, just one thing that I have written, whether the composition is mine alone or my pen taking dictation from some creature living within my mind, gives some hope or some joy to just one person, my writing will not have been in vain, though volumes of it go eternally unread.

Learn more about this author, Rebecca Williams.
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