Fire Love

Love: Terrifying and alluring.

If it was a sure thing, there would be no allure.

If it was caught in a net like a dying butterfly, it would be buried and forgotten. It needs to fight like a hornet, struggling to find a way out, unsure of whether or not it should use that painful stinger.

It is a dance where he is pulled into my space and I push him out of it. We switch places.

It's when sometimes we join, and sometimes we go our separate ways.

Always he is on my mind and I can't shut it off like a mere lightswitch.

It is a dazzling dangerous fire that has crept beyond the fireplace and is creeping across the floor, intent on destroying everything.

Without those flames, the cold would creep in and under the sheets.

I'd rather it threaten to burn the house down than go out and leave only darkness in its wake. Just another writer writing, trying to keep the cold away.

I hate writing!

In the book "Bird by Bird," the author says to write 300 words EVERY DAY. She says, if you feel you have nothing to write about, to write about the reasons you hate writing. So here it is.

I hate writing because it is the opposite of living. If I want to DO something, there is always a choice to be made: to do it, or to write it? Imagining doing the thing is different from actually going through it, and-gods forbid-possibly getting bored of the thing!

I hate writing because it requires me to sit still for entirely too long. My butt starts to hurt after 20 minutes. I need to run around and exercise, call someone, check my e-mail, go to the library...
I hate writing because it is so often required to be organized. I like random. I'm bad at organizing.

I hate writing because it's so easy to put down crap. The words in my head don't equal the words on the page: my writing looks dumbed down, whereas in my mind it felt true and beautiful and formal.

I hate writing because it takes so long to read, and most people won't bother. A lovely voice or a beautiful painting can be taken in within minutes, but reading a true piece, word by word, takes far more time to appreciate.

I hate writing because my sentences and paragraphs, and my characters and scenes, are always flat in comparison to those of my favorite authors-they seem so original and lifelike.
I hate writing because I am afraid of what other people will think. When they read the way I write, they see inside the way I think (although it is somewhat more organized on the page:) and my opinion is freely expressed, and sometimes altogether made up, and I worry that they might not realize that I’m not really a lesbian, I’m just trying to write about someone who is, or they might think I really agreed with the Bush administration, when really I HATED it.

I understand that a big part of writing has to do with style. Your subject damn well better match your style, and your story and characters better make sense in there too. I know that if I write a story in which I am, say, a lesbian, and a Bush-lover, and my reader believes it, then that’s a great thing! I just wove a lie that they fell into! But I’m not a very good liar, and I worry that this might never happen. And if it does, like I said, they might actually believe me...

Since writing is essentially make-believe, and therefore false, it is a little bit like lying, which I hate. So I hate writing!