As Vital to Me as Breathing

Are you ever just sitting somewhere, bored or tired, and there are people around and maybe you’re having a good time, but then all of the sudden you hear someone say something or someone does something that just lights a spark in you, and suddenly you have to write, you NEED to write— there’s this little bit of extra you that’s eating away at your being in the pit of your stomach, you can feel it, and you become convinced that you will be fundamentally altered, that you’ll never be the same, if you don’t write it down right that second, because it’s such a brilliant, perfect, glorious idea and the world needs to know it now because you won’t remember it later when it’s more convenient; and you’re sitting there staring at everyone around you talking and going on normally, and suddenly you don’t care about them or what you’re doing or where you are, you just don’t understand; why can’t they see that this changes everything? It’s like backwards writer’s block, it’s an epiphany, and it shows up at the worst of times. It’s that feeling that makes your heart actually, physically yearn to pour itself out into words, and you’re sick with the need to write, it’s eating away at you silently and only you can feel it, and the rest of the day is wasted because of it. That is the point at which I believe you are allowed to call yourself a writer— when writing becomes an extension of yourself, as vital to you as breathing.