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Writers are addicts. We are addicted to our own words. Forget all the hype about self- expression and creativity; we write because we want to read what we write. It doesn't really matter if others read our work or not; what matters is that we get to read it. If someone reads our stuff and then praises our stuff, that's just icing on the cake, because we know our stuff deserves praise. If someone reads our stuff and then scorns our stuff, we believe jealousy is afoot.

Our needles and pipes are computer screens and pens. Our seedy back-alleys range from home offices to cafes. We are moody and ill-tempered between fixes, and we only feel at peace while under the influence of the drug of our choice. Non-writers do not understand us, and we do not care.

When not engaged in our addiction, we spend time with other addicts. We trip with the likes of Twain, Tolkien, Browning, and the Bard. We note their technique, their use of words, and their ability to create characters that become closer to us then many of our own relatives. We attempt to crawl into the recesses of the masters' brains, hoping that a measure of their genius will stain our souls.

We lie awake at night with ideas for poems, stories, essays, or whatever rampaging through our heads. We fly with the rising sun to our creative place and there give vent to our dreams, our nightmares, and our longings. Pens fly across paper; fingers race around keyboards; our pulse quickens; our eyes dilate; our breathing becomes shallow. We have arrived! We are in that place that irresistibly calls to us. Some call it the bubble. Some call it the zone, but the junkie calls it paradise! It's that place where the conscious world ceases to exist, and the writer becomes lost in an imaginative stupor. At that point, all the emotions of the writer's soul are transferred to the writer page. It is a release. It is a catharsis. And for a time, all is well.

Yes, we are addicts, and there is no use in denying the truth. We write because we need the fix. We need the euphoria that results from our written words. Nothing else will satisfy

Learn more about this author, Isaiah Paul.
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