Originally published at How Not To Write. You can comment here or there.

For many, the making of the writer is a bloody affair. It consists of trying and failing, trying and succeeding only to find one's self blocked by the promise of a breakthrough, trying once more...

Where does this drive come from? What makes the writer who has failed sit down and try once more?

I don't claim to know the answer. I'm just a fellow sufferer of the disease.

Damn this writer's heart. Damn it for making me feel...

Yet, if we knew the answer, would it matter? Would it some how solve the problem? Would it help us to make sense of what it means to posses all these words which are so desperate to make the page?

I doubt it. It seems unlikely that knowing would dampen the drive. In fact, knowing the answer would probably make the suffering all that more acute.

My first experience with the writer's heart came when I was just 10 years old. I bought a typewriter at a garage sale. It was an old Royal office model, a hulking bit of metal that hardly functioned.

I lugged this old typewriter back to my house and set it up on the desk in my room. The excitement I felt at the promise of this machine was intense, and really no different than I feel now when I approach the keys. After staring at the thing for awhile, I sat down and began to type.

The first thing I wrote was a love letter. This shouldn't be a surprise since I'm such a sap (and proud of it). I have a romantic soul. I find beauty in the most mundane objects and I fall in love every day with some odd thing or another. It might be a cloud or a tree. It might be a book or an ancient motorcycle. It might be the sea. And of course, there is my wife... I fall in love with her each day no matter what happens.

This love letter though was the first. I wrote it without concern for style. It was direct and simple. Can I recall the words? Hardly. Though I know that I signed it anonymously and I begged that if this girl knew who I was that she wouldn't tell anyone.

Of course, when I sent out the letter, I received no reply. I received no acknowledgement of receipt at school. I heard nothing at all and was left to wonder whether or not the girl received the letter at all. I still wonder and I've thought about asking her because I still run into her now and again.

Now why would I do that? Why would I insist on such anonymity? Why would I hide who I am?

This is the pattern of course. We write. We struggle. We send out our hearts and souls, and then perhaps, we hear a reply.

Damn these words that demand their place in the world. Damn this writer's heart for giving them life while tearing mine apart.

This sentiment is probably familiar to many of you. You wonder why it is that in spite of the pain you continue on. You wonder why it is that at well-past midnight you are awake and staring at the screen or scribbling furiously in a notebook. Sometimes, you wish it would just go away, that you could be like everyone else, although more often it's those around you who are apt to ask that question.

The answer I have for you is that you are writers. You are possessed by the writer's heart, and there is nothing for you but the damnation of the page. Embrace it.

Damn your writer's heart but do not despair. Damn your writer's heart and revel in that which you are. Be writers.

Now get back to work! There are love letters to be written!

Originally published at How Not To Write. You can comment here or there.

Do you ever dream of that perfect game night? When you and four of your closest writer friends sit down to play a game of Scrabble or Boggle or maybe Huggermugger?

Huggermugger?

Alright, I might be showing my age (and eccentricity) with Huggermugger, but I love word games!

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I've launched a new iPhone app. It's called WordFlipper and it's sort of "Boggle meets Dance Dance Revolution with a Carnival Twist" though some people just skip the tongue-twister and call it fun.
During the launch, I'm offering WordFlipper for free so if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch now's the time to nab it.

Getting back to word games, I'm going to open this post up to you: What are your favorite word games and why? I'll ask the question on Twitter too and post the results back here.

NB: In case you're wondering whether I've given up writing in exchange for making iPhone stuff the answer is no. Didn't you read yesterday's Morning Walks?

Originally published at How Not To Write. You can comment here or there.

Brother needs a shave...

I love morning walks, especially Sunday morning walks.

The Avenue had a big block party last night. There were hundreds of people crammed onto the sidewalks. I'm surprised to find the streets clean. The only sign of the reveling: a few abandoned chairs and several trash cans overflowing (but somehow tidy in spite of steady breeze out of the north). A pair of road closed signs lurk in the dewy grass.

There's no one about, just like any other Sunday, but the memory of the big block party gives the whole place the feel of a town hung over. I suppose it's the chill in the air too.

Even for late Spring it's a bit cold.

I picture people snuggled up in bed with windows cracked open. They're sleeping and dreaming and maybe just lying there thinking of getting up to make coffee or nothing at all or maybe making love in the way that you do when it's too cold to throw off the covers.

The sun feels good as I cross out of the shadows on one side of the street to the other. I walk down a winding street, toward the edge of the big hill (upon which I am at the top). A cat watches me from the third story window of a hundred year-old house. The house gets painted every year and the trim looks thick and padded because the painters don't scrape it down. The cat seems unimpressed with the world as cats often do.

As I walk down the hill, I slow my pace.

Everywhere there are signs of people getting ready for Summer. Porches are decorated with terra-cotta figures and strings of lights. Big, wrap-around porches are stuffed with white and chocolate-colored wicker furniture and all the cushions are bright red or yellow. Sprinklers are hissing and misting.

At the bottom, I cross the community gardens. There's one lone person out working in their patch. One lone industrious soul breaking the pattern of a lovely lazy morning. Even the motorcycle cops roaring by look lazy, the bikes weaving just slightly in their lanes. Yet, this one person defies the world and claws up the weeds and carries some heavy thing or another and brings dangerous implements to bear upon the soil.

I cross the railroad tracks so that I can go back to thinking about nothing in particular.

By the time I make my return loop to the top of the hill, the Avenue will no longer be empty. The early birds at the cafe will begin to filter in and sure enough I see that they are there. The usual Sunday morning crowd. All waiting for the door to open, milling about in sun as the breeze blows puffy bits of poplar fluff around.

I think about the alleys I walked through and closed restaurants with their tables set for all those people who will come later today. I think about the empty shop fronts and the dusty squares of sunlight flickering across their floors. I think about the cat in the third floor window and I wonder what he's looking at now...

And then, the lock turns in the door. In unison, we all watch as a bleary-eyed barista pushes open the door and scuttles back into the shadows. No one's actually in a hurry to go in even though we've been waiting for this moment, but as soon as one makes a move we all head in that direction.