People write to inspire, to change an opinion, to sell a book, to sell a point - but those don’t define my reasons. Asking me why I write is like asking a kid why she sculpted her sand castle the way she did. Because I could. Because the sand was in my hands. Because I felt like it. Because I saw that castle in my head and I had to create it, and see it with my eyes. So I could look back at it. Asking me why I write is a ludicrous question.

The pride in words whether spilled or forced or ripped out of my overflowing thought process has kept me fueled and going for years. Some who approach the page retreat with battle wounds and paper cuts. They fall into the words, attacked and surrounded by an unfamiliar world. They stumble through the alphabet with no roadmap, getting scratched and punctured, lost in thought and the jungle of words. Qs gnaw on their ankles and Ts nip at fingers. Bewildered by never-ending variations of letters, translations of connotation of language, manipulation of rhetoric, they fight for freedom from the jungle. These retuning beaten warriors have seen the nasty, unforgiving side of writer’s block that has left them with bottled up thoughts and no way to remove them. These directionless people who cannot sort through the fighting words, persuading words, war chants – are searching for an answer when writing provides many. They emerge with blank paper.

People are good with numbers. I admit they’re likeable, reasonable and predictable. Every question has a concrete answer, no matter where or in what country it is asked. As every question has an answer, every writer has a thought.

Writing has no final answer. Words are molded, sculpted into a different sandcastle each time they decide to grow out of my head. There is no clear meaning, and it changes.

I don’t like numbers. I never want to learn of the final answer.

When I look back in my head, the equation has changed. Neither can I repeat my steps nor can I test my understanding. My words and I evolve.

I relish in feeling my head is cracked open and my ideas are transforming themselves, and if I’m not in the mood to write, lacking the motivation, I may just have to. I see an ocean of ideas and words swimming around phrases that crash like waves against my skull, and I need to pour them on a paper and release myself of the itchy feeling in my palms. There’s a sea of possibilities, and though they may crash together or ebb and flow through my pencil, drown me or let me float, I am never swimming against the waves. I am not rushed. There is an endless horizon with no destination, and the water is safety, is solitude, and is possibility. In writing, I can breathe.

Writing opens my mind like a soul mate opens a heart. The answer to writing sprouts out of my pencil led a different thought than anyone else’s; new even to me by the time I complete the page. The words morph into a new language of poetry, shine colors as I progress down the page and my creation is something familiar yet foreign. Like old friends, we grow together, with words changing meaning as time affects me. Lines never finish, as they leave a trailing thought that plants itself in a reader’s mind, spreading out roots and growing, changing. They affect more souls than I will ever meet, leaving an impression superior to one I may leave, relating to minds on a basis that I am not permitted to reach. I write because I can, and because many cannot.

Ask me why I like to write. I have no final answer.