It has been asked of me why I write. The answer is far from simple, and always the same: I write to survive. Without words, I would surely end somewhere locked away incoherent within my own hell devised of several thousand realities.

It is like when you hear a song that you cannot get out of your head... until you have heard it over and over inside your head and have had to go turn it on again. Until the story is written, there exists no silence.

A writer is a special breed of person... for it is only a writer that knows the true horror of mind. Hell is not a place, it is a frame of mind... it is being caught with a thread in your head and nothing physical on which to record it. So it repeats, an endless loop until captured in words on paper, or a keyboard.

If a writer isn't careful, the characters develop on their own, often to be heard within the mind of the writer, clamoring to be let out, and to explore this range of feelings in a reality often denied.

Sometimes it is the writer him/herself, oppressed by some outside force, that turns to paper as a way to displace unwanted desires or feelings... or as a simple and effective means to resolve some inner turmoil caught within the heart and soul.

I write to do many things. My poetry is mostly designed to free my emotions or share something I feel deeply about. My stories share with others how and what I see in the world around and within. The important thing I hold to in my writing is that I do not expressly write for myself. I write for others... be it those in the story... or for those who are to read them.

Rarely do I write to say something in particular... for a story or a poem that is forced to paper is not one worth reading. It rings hollow and lies on the paper or screen, a lifeless thing that only oppression and force has given 'life.' I write to escape that: why should I force it to be?

In the event that something must be said, there is generally a poem or story waiting at pen-tip... my only task is to take pen to paper before it leaves my mind in such a state that it cannot transfer. And, oddly, once written, it is dealt with and peace is achieved.

Eventually, I believe that all the stories will be written, and all the poems penned... and then the legacy will pass on. But until then, who knows what strange world my imagination will uncover next?