I LOVE YOU-I HATE YOU!

Writing—How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

 1. I love thee because you silence the voices in my head. You make demons, circus clowns, and flying monkeys a little less scary. You make falling down a deep, dark hole, being swallowed by a whale, or loving the undead okay. You make dragon riding, surviving a plane crash, or marrying a billionaire possible.

 2. I love thee because you are non-judgmental. You allow me to pour as little or as much of myself into everything I write—be it hate mail to the airlines or a love scene between a hermaphroditic weremoose and a wood sprite. You embrace my every whim, accepting each turn of phrase, each ridiculous or brilliant idea, and every quirky character that pops into my head.

 3. I love thee because I finally have friends who don’t look at me with glazed expressions or tight smiles when I describe the ideas swimming in my head. I love that each outing or event is a field trip for research—shopping trip to a sex shop, research—bachelorette party, research—Caribbean cruise, research. I love the conferences organized for people like me, by people like me, who need a legal creative fix.

 4. I love thee because I can write in my sweats and polar fleece, I love that technology allows me to write in the car or at my kids events. I love the online workshops, loops, and blogs. I love the massive amount of support for writers online. I love that I’m never alone. If I log onto Facebook or a loop at three in the morning, somebody will be awake.

 5. But most of all, I love thee writing because in you I found myself. The warrior, the lover, the coward, the villain—they all exist in harmony because of writing.

  But I also want to scratch your eyes out.

 1. I hate thee writing because you are an addiction I can’t cure. Unless I’m heavily medicated, the storylines continue to beat against the inside of my skull—all the time—whenever they want—no matter how inconvenient. Like the time I was eating at Sizzler and tried to nonchalantly snap a photo of a guy I thought would be a great secondary character. Luckily, he gave me my phone back.

 2. I hate thee because I now spell check everything I write including my To Do lists. Green underlined words make me crazy. I will spend two minutes looking up a synonym so I don’t use the same word twice in a sentence, even if it’s a note to the teacher explaining I can chaperone the field trip.

 3. I hate thee writing because you allow me to write in my sweat pants, naked, or in my pajamas. There’s not a lot of incentive to buy pants without elastic waistbands.

 4. I hate thee writing because I’m home to answer the door for every religious group, crazy neighbor, or Girl Scout. Curse those thin mints! Not answering the doorbell or phone makes me nuts.

 5. And lastly, I hate thee writing because you are hard. I will never know it all. I will never write a perfect draft the first time. I will never not have to edit. I will always be competing for those precious spots with agents and editors. And I will always have the next story pushing against my current WIP, wanting to get out. I hate thee writing because we will never be parted.