by Zachariah Langley

Created on: June 30, 2009

I see writing as both a gift and a curse in the same breath, and it wavers a lot of time near insanity. Imagine not being able to convey a thought, or idea. Being stuck looking at a flashing vertical line on a blank computer screen. Then imagine getting the idea out, and it being so good people write you and praise your work wondering when you'll write more. These are things most writers like myself think a lot of times and wonder,.". why? Why do I do this? Why do I do what I do? It isn't money. It isn't power of some kind. So why do I continue to do it?" This could be a form of curse. Imagine a man who could eat whatever he wanted, but could never taste it. Man, that would really stink.

So it goes with a lot of people who write. I've read some really great work through the years, and none of it ever got published. There have been stories I read and teared up like someone watching a very dramatic scene in a movie, and no one even knew who this person was! Writers also see themselves cursed due to the posthumous receiving of most great writer's works. Emily Dickinson had only published 10 poems in her lifetime when she died in 1886. When her family found 40 hard boud writing books and over 1,700 of her poems they sent them out to hundreds of publishers, trying to, in some way, redress her obscurity in life. Many, many writers, including Ernest Hemmingway and recently J.R.R. Tolkien and his Hobbit series, would never come to fame like they would after their living book was closed.

Writing is also a gift, not only to the people that receive it but for the writer themselves. I don't know how many stories, poems, and ideas I've written down have all been gifts.. from wherever it comes. Not many things I've written go as far as a curse, but not all my work has been seen as exemplary. Maybe thats another kind of a curse. A writer won't write great stuff every single time, and even if you think it's great, someone else might not think so. A writer in his time will learn that to be blessed and cursed is to be human, and with a writer both are so. You might write something so amazing and eye opening you feel you HAVE to get it out. The curse side to that is no one might want to read what you feel is so awe important. Nor might a publisher feel to put it out there for the world to see. Then again you might write something on a goof and send it out to world acclaim. The most successful writer is the one that either knows he's good, or that his work will never see the light of day.

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