I write what needs to be written. Thinking is the end of writing. Writing is realization. Thinking is the end of realization. We cannot think up a realization. Realizations come out of nowhere, and are just there. And if I don’t write them down here, now, they will be gone “just like that.” Just like they come, they go, and must be written down before they leave. That is always as it has been for me.

In high school, when I would be given a writing assignment for home work, I had to wait for what needed to be written to come to me. I could never think it up. I was always “taking dictation,” and still am. I remember thinking in high school, “I can never get by with this,” but I always got by with it. And taking a “Creative Writing” course in college was about the end of me because I could not think creatively as the professor was trying to teach me to do. I could only write, but I got in my own way trying to think creatively enough to please the professor. He should have been telling me to “get out of your own way! Just wait for something to come along!” He could have taught me about “creative silence,” just being quiet enough long enough for a realization to find me.

That’s what I do now. I sit and wait for a realization to find me. Or recognize one when it comes along, like in the shower, and have to remember it long enough to dry off and write it down.