good writing

All good pieces of writing begin
as notes scrawled in page margins
and the backs of napkin scraps
Lines that are thick and sticky
leaving your fingers gooey for the licking and your supple lips,
wet from the watering of your mouth.
Any good line can't be forgotten
and you find yourself repeating it over and over until
it becomes so much a part of you that even your warm breath
seems to sing it in its undulations
Your hair seems to describe it when you look in the mirror in the morning
A good piece of writing leaves a taste in your mouth that seems to emanate
from something deep within your soul.
All good pieces of writing begin as memories that will not leave your mind.
Until they come out they will torment you
tired of the constant fighting
you find yourself writing, not to create art, but rather to let your mind rest.
All good writing is like that.
It touches the parts of you that lay shrouded from the outside world.
Ideas that can't be said sometimes have to be,
if they aren’t you die.
Good writing is like an umbrella in the rain or a pair of sunglasses at the dawning of the sun.
It is necessary if life is going to be bearable,
if you are to sleep one more night,
or ever have the semblance of sanity.
It is the peanut butter on the roof of your mouth, the song you can't get out of your head,
the photograph that lies burned into the recesses of your memory
it is not a joy to write such things, at least not at first,
rather it is like a huge load being lifted from your back,
a relief from the torment of words that won't let go.
You have to write if you are to be able to think again, to make sense of the world.
Good writing is to the author a relief and to the reader a joy, a thing most tangible, and real.
Sometimes all you can do is write.
A pen and pad, it seems, are the only friends who will stay with you on a Saturday night.
So you breathe, let the words free and realize that they are not your words,
for although you have written them, they are of themselves an entity.
Writing is like giving birth to a child and watching that child take its first shaky steps into the world. You cannot hold its hand anymore, and if it falls
you can only know that you gave it the strength to stand up and face the world again undaunted.
Good writing is like that.