WRITING FREEDOM

I've written about keeping a record of my own writing--and making a permanent volume of each year's work. I admit I need to write more nonfiction--personal essays, articles--and submit them in order to have any size to my books at all. But my heart in recent years has been with fiction.

I once read parts of several well-known authors journals. They used words to describe their love for writing that seemed to have been pulled from my soul:

Unadulterated pleasure...sit down and just write the darned thing...write to see what happens...I had to write no matter what else was going on in my life...freedom.

It is so wonderful to write fiction, to go anywhere with your ideas, to create a setting you've dreamed of visiting, to have your characters do, and say, things you have only wished you could do or say, and let the heart of the writing take any form--short story, chapters, poetry--maybe only letters between characters. It is liberating to me not to have to stick to data, dates, cold hard facts.

To write, whether to be published or not, soothes my anxiety and gladdens my heart. Doing so makes me a whole person. Writing fiction is the icing on my creative cake.

And, writing anything is never a waste of time.