By writing, I escape my current existence and go into one of my choosing, my liking, my desire. I ask the questions, I give the answers...maybe.

I have too many ideas; must do something with them.

Writing is The Way. Virtually every creative enterprise utilizes written words and relies on understanding of the meanings of those words.

It's therapy, bleeding therapy.

It's an illicit love affair, one that keeps telling me to stop while embracing, seducing me to move forward boldly, swiftly, passionately.

I like the people I meet.

It's fun.

In the beginning, a story would form in my head, dialogue would develop, characters would come to life, and they would rattle in my skull unceasingly until I let them out. I would go to sleep with them, dream of them, wake with the gnawing until I released them through the keyboard; gave them a life of their own in order to have mine back. At least until the next time.

Now, it is different. I observe life, people, things, nature. I smell colors and hear rainbows. I look at things with the perspective of an artist and want to describe every detail and sense so that others may share in my experience.

I am learning and growing. I hope that I have gotten past the most agonizing bleeding but one never knows what the next day will bring.

I can't remember a time when I haven't written. Even in childish scrawl in diaries made of construction paper and crayon, I wrote. Somehow, even then, I knew that getting the words and emotions out would be cathartic for me.

I so enjoy this place, this group of writers. It is a chance for me to share myself and to partake of the sharing of others.

I never thought that I can write. I still don't think my writing worth reading.

In the high school I was not even good in my literature class. My teacher thought that I am trying to be original or eccentric because I had different opinions. This made me put the pencil and the paper aside and never pick them up again until last year.

I have been writing all these years, just not on paper. I would write when I am alone or before I go to sleep and never had the courage to let the words out.

Last year I stumbled on TBD and found this group...I am not sure that I would have ever had the boldness to face the blank page again if it was not TWG. At the beginning was the anonymity, but the encouragement I received here made me believe in my self...a little...so here I am.

When I write it is always personal. Sometime is a picture or a single word like a seed implants in my mind and start growing...most of the time it is only weeds. I am still waiting on my flower garden, but I will settle for only one rose bush.:)

I hear a little bit about myself in all these previous posts. There are so many characters and stories in my life's experience that I have to something with them, like lostmutt.

Powergirl and I found an outlet in teebeedee for what's been there all along.

I am also a visual artist and a landscape designer. Writing is another way to scratch that itch--it's as simple as that.

I don't consider myself a writer per se, I just talk a lot!

But I was persuaded by some friends to write an account of something significant that had happened to me many years ago.

These friends then wanted to know what happened next, so I wrote another piece.

They felt that I had left them hanging in anticipation as to what happened next so I wrote another piece - and another piece after that.

It then occured to me that my daughters knew very little about this time of my life, so I showed what I had written to them. Both of them told me to "paint a picture" of my background and what led up to this significant event so I did.

I've now got to seventy thousand words - the size of an average autobiography - and sent it to a bookseller friend of mine. He suggested that it had the makings of a publishable book which I had no intention of doing. All I wanted to do was record my experience for my offspring.

He suggested I wrote it in the third person and when I did, looking at me from someone else's perspective, I realised I had been an obnoxious person for a great deal of my life.

Some, no doubt, would say, I still am.

To maintain a little self-esteem, I've got an idea that every second chapter would be in the first person and the alternate chapters in the third person. Has this been done before?

But for the life of me, I haven't got the inspiration to write fiction, so I can't claim to be a writer. My problem is that what I have written so far only covers up to the time I got married! Personally, I think I might have gone into too much detail of my early life, but when a memory is awakened about one thing, it leads to another. A bit like going "off-topic" on a thread I suppose!

So why tell you this?

I don't really know, but maybe there is an off-chance that there is someone in this group who can advise me on what to do next. If anything.

And how many pages did Mr. Proust fill with his "Remembrance of Things Past?" Keep going. The result can be reshaped by an editor if you choose, but keep going. The "story" will tell you when it's finished.

Regards the notion that only those who produce fiction are writers - rubbish. That's a concept grounded in snobbism (believe me, I know...I'm a notorious snob!) but has no basis in reality. How many times have you been moved to rage or tears or even action by a piece of journalism so sharp it could slice bread? Or lost for days in a biography only to come out from between the covers dazed and blinking, changed? And then there's poetry, another landscape altogether.

Britscot, once you have you question firmly in mind ("...advise me on what to do next. If anything.") you might consider posting some representative excerpts from your work here or at Tier II and asking for comments and suggestions.

That's what we're here for...to buoy each other, help and support each other. To keep the pen to the page.

Cheers,

- akabukowski

For me, writing is a desire and a choice, but not a need. I've always expressed myself creatively somehow; first in theatre and music, then crafts, was very bad at art and landed here. Throughout, I would write poetry when I was madly in love or grieving.

But I was raised by books and lived in them until my mid twenties. The desire to write was there, and never seemed possible. I began to dabble about 15 years ago. I did write a book, self-help, which was accepted by an agent, who was unable to sell it.

Now I write because it is how I want to tap into the creativity within.

Ideas don't come easily to me; I am not overflowing with them. But when they do, they appear quickly, either almost fully formed or with one opening line that allows me to glide into the next and the next.