There are times. Lets be honest, there are many many times. When I ask myself. Why, out of all the careers and hobbies and jobs you could have chosen, did you choose being a writer? I mean come on. Writing is hard, you often don’t seem to have the time or energy to do it. When you think you don’t have any more to give, it takes even more.
And yet, I haven’t stopped. I write even when I feel like pulling my hair out of my head. I write when I am too busy. I write through the tears of frustration. Through all of it, I still write.
Sometimes I am writing epics, sometimes simple stories, sometimes heartfelt poems, sometimes blog posts. But I am still writing.
Maybe it is because I am stubborn. Because I refuse to quit. But sometimes, I have stopped. I have almost given up writing.
Yet every time I stop, I am drawn back to the words. To the stories waiting to be told.
But why? Maybe, maybe I keep writing to find that out. I write to make sense of the world. To understand why things are the way they are. As I write, I unearth answers. Or at least, that is what I am hoping. Answers are hard to find.
On paper I am putting down my wonderings of why people cry, why some people fall in love and others don’t. I wonder about grief, I wonder about joy. For me, writing is the process of asking questions and finding out the answers.
I could no more stop writing than I could stop asking questions. So why do I keep going with this year after year? To ask questions, and perhaps to find the answers as well.
Shaina Merrick
The Beauty of a Story 