Why I Write

I started off as a reader. Mom used to read Nancy Drew books to me before bed, and somehow I collected over 30 of the hard yellow backed mystery books. I guess you would say that was step one. I don’t remember when I first started writing. I think it just gradually shifted when I realized I could make up my own stories instead of just reading somebody else’s. Since then, I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember.

High school wasn’t really the best for me. Not really having friends was the norm. Obviously part of that was growing up in a country where having an American my age was rare. Comparing it to the friends I have now, I was a lonely kid. It was Jenna, Michael, and myself. It’s sad to think that the people who used to be your whole world can so easily be snatched away, whether in distance or in spirit. To cope with the lack of companionship, I turned to my writing a lot. My stories and the characters in them were sometimes more real to me than the world I actually lived in.

Yet there was one place that has ever remained uninhibited by the outside world. During the Bosnian war, there had been a building on the outskirts of Kobilja Glava that was a partially completed medical facility. After the war broke out in 1992, the building was used as a barricade for the men of the neighborhood. When the war was over, the building remained where it was, and no efforts were ever made to rebuild. And thus it sat, quite embedded in the earth; half sunk, half slunk on the backside of a hill, in a field, in the middle of nowhere, Kobilja Glava. To me, it was the most beautiful place in the world.

I always felt like I could be myself here. No inhibitors or spelling mistakes or hand cramps. My creativity could just flow. I would talk to myself as I explored, planning out wars and battles and fights ending in loss of life or loss of love. I never questioned my own sanity or why I spoke to walls. The inner dialogues could roam free.

I’d bring my backpack, stuffed full of notebooks and pencils and lay it all out on a ratty old blanket somewhere on the second floor. If I got stumped, I’d pace, walking down halls and exploring rooms until my writer’s block had been smashed to pieces and I was running back through rooms and up broken stairs to get back to my notes. Writing always made sense. Sometimes it was the only thing that did.

I’ve found that writing when you’re depressed is sometimes the best medicine. Have you ever noticed that it’s the ones that are hurting that can create the most beautiful art? For some reason, beautiful things come from pain. It makes me think of Van Gogh’s paintings, King David’s poetry, and Mozart’s music. When you’re hurting, there’s a raw emotion that seeps it’s way through your fingers, and bleeds on everything you touch. Your words, your emotions, your work – they’re all living shards of you.

Writing gives me peace. It gives me power. It’s violent and urgent and grotesque and REAL. I am both creator and destroyer. I am both life and death. If a character is too weak, kill them off. Make the reader suffer like I have suffered; like the character has suffered. I can offer hope on a silver tray, and then snatch it away just as quickly. That power that comes with writing is probably one of the reasons I do it. When I have no control over the pain I feel, or the emotions that have gone numb in my chest, I can write. I have control over that. Much like someone who slashes lines into their skin just to feel something, I can control everything, when I am the one writing the script. If I didn’t have my writing, I honestly don’t know if I would even be here. That’s the God-sworn truth.

My dream job has always been to be an author. Before Chesh, the plan was to spend my life alone in a cabin in the woods in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by my dogs, and to write. Now the dream is a little different. It has morphed into spending my life with him in a cabin in the woods in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by dogs and kids, and to write. It’s always been my passion and always be my passion. That doesn’t mean all my writing is dark or depressing. That doesn’t mean all my writing is happy-go-lucky or happy endings. I want to write truth. I’ve always wanted to write truth. A lot of times it’s me working through what I think or feel and trying to relate that to the world around me in a way that makes sense.

Writing is a safe place. Writing is a sanctuary. If I can share that with other people, then maybe I’ll help some others along the way. Don’t fear your inner demons, but let them escape through your pen. That is my redemption. And that is why I write.