Throes of Creation by Leonid Pasternak<\/p><\/div>\n

So you want to be an author, huh. So do a lot of us, including me. In that pursuit I am engaged in finding and completing the steps necessary to accomplish that end.<\/p>\n

It ain\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n

Among the throngs of those who write the definition of who is an author and who is a writer is a hot topic. For purposes of this discussion let\u2019s define an author as anyone who has gotten published and been paid. All the rest of us are just writers.<\/p>\n

The term \u201cjust writers\u201d is not an attempt to diminish our time-won rapture. After all, the pen is<\/em> mightier than the sword and those of us who \u201cjust\u201d write are blessed\/cursed with a terrible affliction over which we have no control.\u00a0 This affliction stalks us. Wherever we are, it is. Writing is a heady affliction but one we welcome like a hangover after too many glasses of the fine wine of creativity.<\/p>\n

We sit down to write and take a sip of mind-settling reflection. Sometimes our minds are so parched, so needy of expression that a single sip will trigger torrents of words like the flowering of a desert after an overdue rain.\u00a0 More often a single sip is insufficient. We sit motionless, staring at blank paper\/screen, hands on the keyboard, waiting.<\/p>\n

We push back, drop our hands into our laps and rise to start pacing. We need more reflection, more emoting, heavier thinking, another sip or two or three of that wine.<\/p>\n

Then we\u2019re back typing furiously not even realizing that we ever even sat back down to type, the words coming so fast we can\u2019t keep up, snarling over slow typos, but writing, writing, writing, taking big gulps now, the wine so sweet, the words so exact, we go on and on and on, it\u2019s so much fun, we drink some more and write more and more and more, joyously exuberantly exhilarated.<\/p>\n

We stop.<\/p>\n

Have to stop.<\/p>\n

Wow! Where did that all come from?<\/p>\n

We snatch the paper from the typewriter or scroll back to the top of the page and read.<\/p>\n

Damn that\u2019s good!\u00a0 OK, OK, there are typos, some clumsy phraseology but nothing that can’t be fixed and, damn, it is good.\u00a0 We have drained the wine, feeling fine, just fine and proud and, suddenly, sleepy.<\/p>\n

Can\u2019t wait for tomorrow. Fuck the hangover.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a writer.<\/p>\n