This evening I attended an event hosted by the library I work for.  Elizabeth Berg, one of my favorite authors,  was in town speaking about her life and her writing.  What a wonderful thing, to listen to her heartfelt words about her work.  So much of what she said resonated with my own internal writer.  The thing that struck me most was that she has a physical need to write.  She said that writing was a release, something that had to be done, that she’d write even if she wasn’t published.  I agreed – so much so that my eyes teared up as she was talking.  Because that’s exactly the way it is.  Sometimes there are things that just have to be put on paper, that keep me up at night, the words rolling around in my head, words that distract me from my work, that worry at me until I can’t stay away any longer and I sit down and let it out.

A painter has to paint, a dancer must move.  And a writer?  A writer has to let the words flow.