Working at an assisted living facility awhile back provided me with the opportunity to view life and its intricacies through the eyes of elderly people who were simply living out their final years as comfortably as possible. One man, who wasn't as old as the typical assisted living resident is but who had issues that warranted round-the-clock monitoring, told me something interesting not long before we parted ways. He said, "You see far, and you feel deeply." Later, when I thought about it, I realized that he had never had very much to go on to be able to form that opinion of me. And I was, needless to say, touched by his spot assessment of me.
I don't think there is a writer alive who could do what we do if he or she did not "see far and feel deeply." Writing is as public a display of emotion as is standing on a street corner screaming or crying or on a building ledge getting ready to jump. While it certainly is a more quiet and a less overtly violent endeavor, it is no less deep and no less sincere.
I will go out on a limb here as far as to say that pulling words from our brains is sometimes, if not usually, physically painful. It certainly can be draining, as is evidenced by anyone who has seen a writer push himself or herself back from a desk in sheer exhaustion. Writing is risky business, especially once the dam breaks and the words come tumbling out, not to be contained. We have no choice but to allow them to cascade down, as there is no hope of damming them up again until they've spent themselves and are nothing more than a trickle. And then, even if we do manage to block its path with a rock or a branch, whatever seeps into the ground is lost forever.
Or is it?
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