Tuesday's Inspiration - William Carlos Williams by janet lane walters

Many years ago, a critique partner gave me a little framed statement from William Carlos Williams, a poet, that struck me as very true. "I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it."

What does this mean to me? When I began writing the words were painfully put on paper. That was in the days of typewriters and carbon paper. Each year of writing, telling stories became easier and the writing flowed from page to page to page. My husband said my writing was an obsession he didn't want to cure. He's a psychiatrist so he might have some knowledge about curing obsessions.

Of course writing takes things other than being able to form sentences that follow the rules or don't depending on what you want the reader to discover. Writing takes imagination and imagination is the disease that can't be cured. When I write suddenly the idea takes shape and I'm off and running. Not exactly running but putting words on paper and finding characters, scenes and plot that draw me into their world.

What about you. Have you caught the writing disease? If you have remember it's for life.