Q: What’s better: writing or having written?
A: People love to rave about the blissful process of writing, but let me tell you… Having written beats writing, no contest.
Writing is the messy act of giving birth: I bare my guts on the computer screen, and in the thick of this bloody, miraculous, godawful process, there is no way to know if either I or my creation will ever emerge whole. The hope keeps me going: that one day, I will have written, and that this small, bloody corner of my soul will know a modicum of peace before the renewed siren call of writing rises once more.
But having written, ah, now there’s the blissful part. My words are finally free to reach others and germinate their own imaginations. Perhaps these people will hate it, but never as much as I did writing and revising it; or perhaps they will fall in love with my story, but never as fiercely nor as desperately as I.
There’s a supreme vitality to writing, and there is no having written without the writing part. But the reward of writing, for me, is found in having written, in watching my creation go forth into the world, having left the bruised mess of my mind behind for greener pastures.
Daniel Roy’s story “Forever and a Life”
in Metaphorosis Friday, 12 April 2019.
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