Writer As Junkie
Writers, despite what they often say about how painful and frustrating writing can be, also will admit it is a kind of ‘addiction’. And, like most addictions, a habit that is very hard to break.
Keats writes “I have fears that I may cease to be / Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain”. The only relief is found in reaching for, not a bottle or a needle, but a pen. You need that fix, and you’re not fooling anyone by claiming that you’re just ‘chipping’, and you have it under control.
Call it “Attention Deficit Disorder” if you want, but anyone interested in a lot of things has to deal with a “teeming brain”, and it is difficult to stay entirely focused on just one. This is all by way of an excuse for going back to scribbling this blog, when I should be concentrating all my attention on my current major writing project about growing up on the South Side of Chicago.
But write now (pun intended), I have been so distracted by the issue of censorship that I can’t shut up about it.
