In our stories, as in life, we “write” ups and downs like eager adventurers on a never-ending ride at life’s amusement park, taunted by the noise of life ( both the external clamor surrounding us and the internal racket in our heads), by which we are goaded upward one minute and knocked down the next.  But, unlike the confused and fearful individuals who scurry away from the turmoil, the writer seeks out life’s noise in order to study it, understand it and ultimately to embrace it. 

The writer’s  creativity depends on her ability to see up close the elements that make life’s noise necessary, and the sounds that give it its rhythm. 

In writing, our narratives depend on the intricacies of life that make living difficult for so many, seemingly easy for others, sad for plenty and happy for some. Writers borrow real life moments from the stories that surround them, from the instances that have the power to connect individuals to one another, and the emotions that could unite people as one.

A writer does not limit her task to providing all the answers, but to the job of creating a desire in readers to ask the questions. To want to know, and to want to care.

Without the desire to place oneself right smack in the heart of life’s noise, or to stop long enough to listen to the analysis  within, the writer may end up with nothing but unfinished pages.

Without life’s noise to dissect, there is nothing to write about. 

Without a note, the song won’t get written.

Without the desire to listen, writers, like individuals,  remain deaf to the very things that make life worth living, and to the stories we were meant to create and to read.

Every now and then the noise outside us, and within us, grows so loud that it becomes difficult for the writer to finish her pages.  It overwhelms us, so we shut down.  We tune ourselves out or take a break. We run away from life’s commotion, and from ourselves, and from one another.

Then, with faith and time to reflect and to realize why we need the noise, after a while, when the silence grows too big,  the pandemonium suddenly  begins to drift back to us, and we welcome it. We have come to recognize  the value of the individual sounds that created it and we start  to listen again.  And to write again.

And if we are open and brave enough, to live again.