For me, writing is like that place in childhood where I didn’t care if my dress was dirty or how many mosquito bites I had.  It is that place where curiosity lured me into thorn bushes, though I’d never know my skin had been pierced.  The literary world is the place I go to escape things like manners, social expectations, and all the other things we have to remember so often as adults…it’s a shame, that prison cell we’ve all agreed to keep.

People have asked me a lot of questions about my writing, many of them I’ve never considered until asked.  Through some of these discussions I’ve realized I have a particularly foul taste in my mouth for both ghost writing and using a pen name.  I think it is because I could never bear to write something I wouldn’t put my name by, and could never bear to write something that didn’t have my name by it.  Writing is so special to me, and for better or worse, I want my name to be attached to what comes out of me.  It’s my chance to be free in front of everybody, not just in a place too many years behind me to count.  A free-spirit should not be a memory we revisit in secret. Because I write I never have to grow up all the way, and I can conform as little as I like…and get away with it.  I treat the blank page like an unruly child treats the ground, and I want credit for my mess.

I have a journal my mother-in-law gave me one Christmas that has little quotes written throughout it.  I was thumbing through it yesterday, and read one that struck a chord.  Isadora Duncan writes, “You were once wild here.  Don’t let them tame you.”  Writing is that place for me, the unkept garden I will not manage.  How lucky am I to have such a place?  And it’s not fantasy; it’s real, and with me always.  There are no rules, just writing.  Paper is not governed, and inside, neither are we.  Writing is sweet anarchy.