I have always written. Since I can remember my imagination has fired words into whole worlds, scribbled on my brain as a child. From my brain to the page, the compulsion to put words onto paper defines my purpose for writing: I have to.
Poetry is my first love. I find it in everything. It is transcendence, describing the mundane with the brilliance of purpose and the clarity of simplicity. All of our messages stem from a clear purpose and poetry is king form for this kind of singlemindedness. Twice in my life teachers tried to wrangle poetry from me. They almost won.
But now, as a professional freelance writer I find great pain and pleasure in writing. It is not a matter of inspiration, as I once thought it to be. It is a choice of dedication. It is the thought that simmers in order to produce one blasted sentence; the irritating stare at a blank page. It has shifted from delicacy to discipline, which does not diminish its pleasure for me. Rather, it makes the outcome that much sweeter.
In my career, I am given to the task of honing my craft through the art of spiny collaboration and through personal exhile. Both are needed to create, one is needed to imagine. As the pleasure of working with world class organizations and writers broadens for me I am reminded of the importance of words. For me, they should reveal the truth about a person or organization; they should be plain in that regard, not beguiling. In the end, what pulls one person towards another is the authenticity of their story. Words, then, are bridges into the lives of others.
