why i write

The thing with me is that I don't ever suffer from "writer's block." I don't say this to brag, or in a woe-is-me-I-don't-have-writer's-block-my-life-is-so-hard kind of way, but I simply state this as a fact. I don't have writer's block. Ever. Much like I've never had a brother or like I've never been good at math. It is what it is.


I wrote my first novel when I was 12 years old. It was about a young girl in Austria during the Holocaust (I went through a Holocaust phase, you see). The thing was over a hundred pages, and realistically, it probably sucked pretty bad. At one point, the document got so big that it crashed my computer and I lost it all.


The truth is that I always have way too many words in my head - sentences, sometimes, or paragraphs, even - that are just begging to be put down on paper. I form the prose in my thoughts before I've even considered that, hey, this would be a good piece to write. Life happens, so I translate it into words. Sometimes these words sound pretty. Others, they don't. But they must be written down. It never feels like a chore.


untitled
by me


She finds
Nothing
Quite as satisfying
As the hours spent writing
Poetry
Inside her head

Take the other night, for example. We're out and about, at a club in the West Village. My best friend from high school, Erika, dances with a hipster and grabs him by his suspenders. We all laugh. It's really hilarious, isn't it? But all the other girls move on. I don't. I make it a story in my head; I give it words. I think, this is something worth writing about.


On Friday, while out on a freelancing assignment, I met this photographer. He asked me what I hoped to do with my life. Write, I said. I can freelance. I can write fiction. Whatever. Preferably, a mix of both. Perhaps it's ridiculous, and maybe even a little pretentious (because who am I to make it as a writer when so many others haven't?), but I want to make a living off of writing.


"What do you want to write about?" he asked.


I don't know, I said. I like art. I like travel. But mostly, people. I want to write about people. 


And the things that happen to people. Their stories.


I hope I'm good enough to do that.