The Purpose of Death is Life

The dead don't wait for the living. Their journey has already begun.

Have you embarked on your journey?

Are you willing to share it with the world?

For the writer, the answer should be a resounding, "yes!"

When Natalie Goldberg said, "writers live twice," she was correct.

Beyond our experiences, and our moments of reflection, however, are the lives we live within the stories we read and the stories we write.

Through the prism of our perspective, we share our observations with the world. Our stories will be our legacy. Our prose, the fingerprints of our souls, will remain long after we have gone.

People will read our memories and glimpse our philosophies. They will read our romances, and wonder who we truly loved.

We write, because we possess an innate need to share our private thoughts.

We will assume various identities, and reveal our secrets by way of concealed messages. We will divulge our fears, and reach for the stars, and we will often wonder: How will I be remembered?

Our greatest fear is that our story will perish with us.

Perhaps I can only speak for myself, but even George Orwell once postulated that "all writers are vain."

We indulge in our own vanity, as much as we indulge in the vanity of other writers.

What I mean to say is that writers are readers. At least we should be.

Each novel we read is a world where we escape into and lose ourselves. We live that life with the characters created by someone else, exist in that alternate universe of suspended belief, and emerge with a new perspective (or not) as writers.

I have devoted most of this year to reading and revising. And revising. And revising. And revising.

And reading. And reading. And reading. And reading some more.

I love it.

The challenge has been to balance my commitment to my craft with my devotion to my children.

When I have my children for visitation, I dedicate my time to them. I read with them or I read to them. And as much as I would like to read one of the numerous novels I am currently reading, to them, I set those stories aside and journey with my kiddies into the world of Junie B. Jones or Alice in Wonderland.

I work six days in a row with hours that fluctuate from seven in the morning to eleven at night as a police dispatcher. I meet my fiscal responsibilities as I was raised to, and I sacrifice wherever I must to make ends meet.

These are the dealings of fate.

This is a writer's life.

I try to squeeze in as much reading and writing as I can into tiny droplets of time and I do it with great pleasure despite enduring the purest of pain.

I, nor any other writer, can know which day will be the last day we will ever write again. So it is incumbent upon us to embrace the grind. Multi-task and manage our daily obstacles as we embark on our journey to fulfill our dreams.

We must not procrastinate, as we are prone to do, and we must not save our best for another book.

If we are to share our journey with the world, we must do so with unparalleled passion. Regardless of age, vocation, or status, we must do it now and not be discouraged by the drumming of the disenchanted.

Fear not that it is too late...after all, that is why the gods invented death.

Embark on your journey now, and meet the end without regret.

Every book you read, every story your write, every moment you devote to your craft is a step in the right direction.

Don't wait for destiny to find you, because there is only one destiny that awaits us all, and since tomorrow is promised to no one, today is the day that you must live your life.

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so as long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.” – Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451