If you could stick your pen in your heart!

[Justme]

If you could stick your pen in your heart. How deep would you go and what would you go and what would you find?

What is it about writers that makes us so creative? What makes us choose this form of expression over any other? Are we lost in a world that better suits us than the one we were born into and thus? Do we wish to reveal to the world the darkness or the light that lives and breaths deep inside us. would we burst at the seams if we couldn't reveal the realms we have created inside us all? Are our writings more about us, or the people we wish we were or it it deeper than that?

What makes us dance to the tune we do?

Do we as I've read so many other artists have bouts of depression? Do we need to experience some brooding pain in our lives in order to effectively write with such drama that it would actually draw a reader to our stories.

Are we teetering on the edge of madness, when we immerse ourselves in worlds so far removed from reality and do we dream of being apart of that world and disguarding the world around us?

 

[Twilight Flyer]

For an English assignment back in 1984, my teacher told us to write anything we wanted, no limit on length, no criteria at all except that it had to be creative.

After a couple days thinking about it, I busted out a 3-page ballad of nonsense called "The Ballad of Ol' Jeff Crud." My teacher happened to be reading it while we were taking a test and busted out laughing at her desk. She eventually told me that whatever I did, I need to write in my life, whether I personally or professionally. She said I had a gift.

So I did. I've been writing now for nearly 30 years. My first novel comes out next month and I have two (including my first fantasy novel) coming out in 2013. But I've got enough scripts, storyboards, plot outlines, and character bios that I could write until I'm 100 and never get to them all.

I don't know what it is that makes us creative. But I do know that one of the keys to being a writer beyond just being creative, is being a good story-teller. Those are two very different abilities or traits.

Of course, it helps to be crazy, too.

 

[Penpilot]

I'm not sure. Ask me again tomorrow and I'll probably say something different, but for me today, I'd say it's a way to open up to the world at least a little. I'm 100% pure bred introvert and tend to be quite reserved. Writing lets me have conversations and say things in a a way I wish I could in real life. And to Echo Twilight Flyer, it lets me go a little bat shit crazy with out the results being broadcast on youtube.

 

[Twilight Flyer]

...And to Echo Twilight Flyer, it lets me go a little bat shit crazy with out the results being broadcast on youtube.

Amen to that.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

I'd probably bleed and die.

Oh, you meant figuratively. Um, in that case, you'd find a total weakness for comedic takes on serious scenarios.

In other words, I'm a huge Joss Whedon fan.

 

[Arranah]

I literally started my writing career after my brother murdered his neighbors. He got lost in prescription drugs and an over dose of unforgiving, unrelenting intolerance because of religion. In his taped confession right after the murders, he said, "Religion has ruined my life. I have never had any fun." I had loving parents who did the best they could to raise us. I wanted to tell the world that. At a writer's conference one of the instructors told me that I could tell more truth in fiction than with nonfiction. Turns out it was true. So after my first book I turned to fiction, and when I have something to work out, I worked it out through the storyline.

I have always been more intellectually inclined than my family and those I grew up around. When I was eight I asked my nine-year-old cousin, "If I cut myself open, where would I find me?" I was talking about my inner essence. She looked at me like I was crazy. All these years later she is on antidepressants and religion, stayed married to a person who disrespects her and has passed that on to her offspring. I kept adjusting my life until I got it right. If someone has died that I want to visit, I put them in my stories. If there is a world reality I want to visit I create it. I could be nuts. But I like me this way.