How to Write?

Find a sacred place, one that draws you to it with its beauty or smell, strong coffee or lively conversation. Some writers light candles, invoke angels, hold river stones, to give them the courage to open up one large artery and let blood pour, over the page, onto the table, through the door, into the lake.

A woman told me, "After writing for many years, happy and bright things that I believed would draw people closer to me but didn't, the dark stories inside of me starting screaming to come out, 'We are here too, your monsters and demons, we want to be heard.' It was either let them out or stop writing. But I needed to write to stay alive. So I wrote about wanting to kill my husband, with the knife I carried around the kitchen to cut up eggplant, children snug in their beds. I was too tired to walk up the steps to do it so didn't kill him. But, I wanted to." She paused then looked into my eyes, "I read that to people I trusted and no one hated me. The writing drew them closer to me. And I felt free enough to fly."

I prefer the strong coffee, long wooden tables, jazz music places to write, where you can sit for hours nursing one strong brew and nobody will notice or care, where some of the same people come day after day to wrangle with words, ideas, theories, memories.

What is the story that you are compelled to write, that you can't put down, that pulls you over the edge like water falling? Who are the characters that come to you, unbidden, with their wounds exposed, their hair teased and bleached, their ignorance, and failed attempts at life, their unruly loves? How do they wrestle with the questions you can't stop asking even though know there are no answers?