A Writer not Writing

Who is a writer if a writer isn't writing?

Not themselves, it seems.

For the writer, born with the need to set free the people in their heads, there can be no more honest and true place to be than in front of the keyboard, or holding the notepad, each word transporting their characters into reality. When deprived of this, and let’s face it, in modern life there are more necessary distractions than it’s possible to list, are they even a real person anymore? I’m not. At least not to a degree that I feel my soul could survive.

I can don many masks, perform many roles. Parent, child, sibling, friend, lover, employee, (mostly) functioning member of society. Yet the only time I truly take off the mask, let the walls crumble, remove the ever-conscious monitor of my own being, is when I’m writing. When I’m in the worlds of the people from my mind. Being custodian to their stories, being the one who gets to discover them, is what I’m here to do.

When I’ve been in that zone and then have to come back, have to return to my roles, it feels like dressing when you were happier naked. There’s the shock and the mad fumble to cover my vulnerability, to slip on that mask of a smile. To monitor monitor monitor what I say, what I do. And every bit of it takes me further from my true naked self.

So, maybe that’s who a writer is when a writer isn’t writing. A human hiding a soul.

(previously featured on wordpress)