Julia’s Writing

People always ask me why I write. I never really know what to say. If I told them the truth, they’d lock me up and toss the key down a cold, dark well. But I can write it here. At least you, dear reader, will either disbelieve me outright or not know for sure. Others will hope what I’m saying is reality, it will suit their macabre natures. But, no one will really know. Even I wonder.

I used to have this trick when I was a kid. When I was too scared to say or do something, I’d imagine it first. I’d imagine the worst possible thing happening. After playing the whole scene in my head and working out all the kinks, my fears eased and I was able to say or do whatever it was I was afraid of.

Writing is like that for me. I have dreams of ghosts, zombies, vampires and giants. Dreams of strange lands, of things I’m afraid to do. My dreams are more vivid than life itself, sometimes they bleed into reality. They turn shadows into ghosts of dead children, make my dog shape shift into an iguana. They change the old homeless woman digging for cans into a filthy flesh eating zombie.

This is what I write about. I write what I see every day, what I dream at night.

I write to dispel these breathing dreams, make them fictional. I’m afraid that one day, my pen will go idle, my keyboard will break down and my dreams will remain unrecorded. On this day, my dream world and the real world will collide and things will, in fact, go bump in the night.

But, there is something I fear more. What really keeps my pen flying and my zip drive full is the idea that one day I will stop dreaming.