Belle the Cat

Once upon a time, a few years ago, I took it upon myself to declare myself a writer. Not an author, since that to me seems to indicate that I am actually published. I can be an author after I sell my first book, but now and forever, I will be a writer. Even if I became a quadriplegic, I’ll still find a way to write. Even if I were trapped without any way to communicate, inside my shell I would still consider myself a writer, knowing that numerous journals, diaries, notepads and scraps of paper – the detritus of my life – contain the seeds I always knew were inside me. Perhaps, through careful work like the captive breeding of some endangered species, they may be coaxed to grow even after I am gone.

I have in my clutches a handful of eternal stories that have been with me since my burgeoning as a creative being back in my early-teens. I keep going back to them and the characters within, discovering as I grow ways to have them mature and change as well. But, I trace a deeper creativity back even farther, to the realm of early childhood. It is by tapping into the strange and mystical force that has been inside me all my life that I feel I am able to come up with the short stories, the poems, the quick sketches that may or may not be great literature. I struggled for a long time with the question of weather or not I should fear or mourn the loss of ideas that flit in and out of my brain every nanosecond, without me to control or focus them into something concrete. Should I write everything I think of down? Well maybe, there is no way for me to do this. It is better for me to let them go after a cautionary exploration, and then later, if and as needed, I will be able to conjure up the strange charters and plots floating like perpetual duckweed between my skull and perineum.