For the Love of Writing

For the Love of Writing

I was lying on the sofa a few nights ago with that nagging feeling that I hadn't done everything I should do before I allowed myself to be swallowed up in slumber. I listened for a dripping faucet but heard nothing. I tried to remember if I had shut off the coffee pot and knew that it was the last thing I did before leaving the kitchen after washing the dishes after dinner. Then I jerked my head up and looked around the room, not fully awake but not sleepy enough to stay in my comfortable cocoon of blankets of dogs that were keeping me as warm as toast.

He was there in the room with me. He was slipping silently out into the hallway and heading toward my room where my computer was already gratefully sleeping. He was barefoot and his bare chest glistened in the soft light cast off by the hallway night light. He was taking one soft step after another, pausing only long enough to make sure I was following him. I couldn't say anything. All I could do was move toward my keyboard to begin the rapid tap, tap, tapping, of key strokes that would allow me to sleep.

My muse had once again snatched me from the edge of sleep to bring me into another world where my thoughts are allowed to run wild and my dreams are all attainable. I wrote three poems and added an entry to my personal journal before I was able to retire for the night. You see, I am a writer and only another writer could understand how alluring, addictive, and even passionate a muse can be. Only someone with the same passion could understand why I could not sleep until I had written something, anything!

I've been writing for a number of years now and long before that I was a storyteller. At first I only listened to the stories my grandparents told about the way they met and their years together as they tended to a large family. I absorbed the details like a sponge and did the same thing when my mother talked about her life before I existed or my father talked about his years in the Navy and the coal mines. Later, when I was a much older Junior High School student, I learned that I could use some of my family history to make people laugh if I embellished it just a little bit, or maybe a whole lot. I told yarns during lunch break that often spread through the student body and entered the local rumor mill. I entertained the students who rode the same bus I did and it was much later that I found out how good it made some of them feel to be a part of a group doing anything. At that point, a lifelong courtship with words had already begun and has since been a driving force in my life.

I've been blessed to be able to do something I love and make a few pennies from it in the process but the honest truth is that I would write even if I never sold a single piece of writing again. Writing is my escape from the cold winds of reality. It is my passport to visit fantasy and possibility even when responsibility has me firmly planted in place. It is my connection to other people all over the world. The world really is a much smaller place than we perceive it to be and we people everywhere have problems with family, love, pets, parents, the environment, etc. We may take different approaches as we deal with our life experiences but we all have them and we all need to know that we are not the first ones to go through something and we won't be the last ones to go through it either.

Nothing, aside from being a mother, gives me greater pleasure or fulfillment than writing. I write about life experiences that have brought me to my knees in prayer and those that brought me to my knees in laughter. I write about my family and my friends, my thoughts and my choices, and sometimes I even write pure fiction. I write about whatever crosses my mind or whatever I've seen that makes me reconsider my life choices or decisions. I write because it is a need inside of me as strong as the need to eat when I'm hungry or to love and be loved. My writing is as much a part of me as any lover could ever be.

I hope to share with you my daily writings, whatever they might turn out to be. I promise not to jot down my store list because I can't think of anything else but don't be surprised if I sometimes ramble on with the mundane details of my everyday home life. I will make you one more promise as I begin this blogging adventure. I promise that you will never be bored when you stop here to read my posts.

Sincerely,

Dianna Doles-Petry
1/27/2010