now that I think about it... where IS my pen?

I've loved and cherished and hated and been enthralled and disgusted by people who never even existed.


Such is the life of a writer. To come stumbling across people that no one else can see or hear but you, and to do everything your imagination and your brain and your heart can do to introduce them and their worlds and their happiness, trials, and tribulations with the world.


To use whatever skills and talents you may possess, to show people out there in the big green and blue marble that they are not alone. That there's more to this life than they could ever even begin to imagine if only you believe there is.


It's having your heart swell in your chest with love for the lives you're telling tales of, then having your heart ache and feeling it shatter into a million pieces and scatter into the winds when your characters' hearts are broken.


It's the tears that fall as you find yourself overcome with the grief that your character is suffering with each and every loss that they face, as though the grief were your own.


It's feeling your blood boil in your veins with rage at the antagonist and having your brain churn with ideas for all the ways you could get back at them for whatever dastardly thing they'd done to your poor protagonist this time around.


It's not being good, it's not being evil. It's being everything all at once all the time. It's living a thousand lives in one body; it's a thousand brains inside your own brain; it's a thousand hearts and a thousand lifetimes and all of it forcibly crammed into the space of one lifetime lived on this planet.


It's exhausting and exhilarating and exciting and incredible. It's a rush unlike any other that will drive you from your bed at 3 in the morning (if you haven't spent the entire night at the keyboard to begin with) and drive you from the shower with a towel hastily thrown around your body and soap in your hair, muttering desperately under your breath as you search your house like a madman "Where's a pen? Where's a pen? Where's the penpenpenpenpen..." And all the while your dog is staring at you with his head cocked like he thinks you're crazy.


And maybe you are.


It's not a hobby. It's an obsession. It's a lifestyle. And there are no vacations. You could be lying out on the beach, drink in hand, sunglasses on, hearing the sound of the waves lapping lazily at the shore, and suddenly, out of nowhere, it'll hit you. And suddenly you find yourself scrambling through your beach bag, praying you remembered to pack along your notebook for the ride, or typing away madly on your cell phone because you knew they'd only laugh at you if they caught you trying to bring your laptop along to the beach.


"Take a day off," they'd laugh, and shake their heads.


If only they knew.