Why One Writes

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

~Maya Angelou

I profess that the above statement is true.

It is agony.

An agony I'm working through.

 I found this quote while reading through other inspiration quotes on Buzzfeed about writing, and why we write, or just simply finding motivation to write.  I've got stories inside me.  Characters.  Worlds.  Ideas.  Some of them I wonder if I'm too late in telling, and that worries me.  But it's cluttered.  My head and heart are cluttered, and after all this time I'm working through getting some of what is in my head out on paper.

It's a frightening process that works against my insecurities.  Not reading until the 3rd grade and so forth, those burdens that still haunt, even though I've overcome those weaknesses years ago.  But for me the real trial is turning what I see visually and feel emotionally into words.

It wasn't until I was a senior in High School that I learned people thought in words.  I would have small conversations in my head, but really everything I experienced in my mind was jumping from one image to the next, living through one scene to the next.

It was late at night and my friends and I were lying on the ground starring up at the stairs, inventing constellations.  And as we gazed into the heavens we began talking about thought processes.  Every single one of my friends thought in words.  They didn't see pictures!  I was amazed and baffled.  I though everyone sees things happening in their mind like a movie.  One day, after that, I asked one of my friends who was there that night how she writes stories.  Does she really not see the characters moving about?  And she told me that when she writes she hears the words in her head, but that was it.  No pictures.  No movements.  No buildings or scenery.

And all I could think was how boring that must be.

But the problem I'm having is translating what I hear, see, feel, and experience into words.  And most of the time I'm not there, simply an observer watching, laughing, crying.  I just got to find the words.

It's a process.

I'm learning.

This nice thing about writing is that there isn't an average age or expiration date.

And so many writers who have found success did so later in life.

Imagination is for the young and old alike.

I found the below image on Facebook and had a good laugh over it.

And don't worry, I'm still working on my music as well. ;0)