Punctuation

Who I am as a Writer

I am the person who takes every opportunity to weave the web of a plot line; 

who unwittingly and habitually dedicates the entire book to interpreting the scene around her characters; 

who finds poetry in a plastic bag drifting along a stretch of highway.

In midnight's insanity and the anticipation of dawn, I find is where most of my greatest pieces blossom from the emptiness that is nonexistence. 

In the light of my computer screen, with emotion-evoking music blaring in my ears, after a day spent driving in downpours, my mind becomes a whirlwind of everything I have ever felt and then how to express all of it.

I can effectively write an essay, though only when I convince myself there is a story to convey, a plot line to expand upon. 

And poems are my mantra, my muse, my alma mater.

I have an amicable relationship with commas without their 'ands' to properly complete a sequence according to the laws of my language. 

I admire run-on sentences, jump at any and every opportunity to force readers to truly feel the effects of oxygen escaping from their lungs without having to breathe a word, begging for that tiny hiatus we all consider our opportunity to pull in another breath that we all fondly call a period. 

 But I love brevity. These short-cut sentences. And their shallow breaths. I embrace improper and extravagant pauses. 

I am the person who charms the reader onto the edge of their seat, stuck in a clear mental universe while the real world around them fogs away.

My aim is to capture them inside of my time-warping piece, help them lose track of time and their troubles. And to please them with a line or a plot that kills their heart just enough to start it up again.

I am the person who stops on the side of the road to engrave something in the notes on her phone, so she can make it into art later in the solitude and inspiration of her darkened bedroom. 

I speak in metaphors and I laugh in onomatopoeias.

I create my own words and compile my own dictionary of them all. 

I conjure my own fantasies and they become a heavy reality inside my head. 

I color outside the lines of reality before my eyes so that I can reason with the loudest, most chaotic beings of the human anatomy...the heart, the mind, and the soul. I color outside the lines of reality before my very eyes so that I can speak louder than the loudest pieces of the loudest people; so that I can make them hear me, make them hear and experience my emotions and the emotions of my characters. 

I am the writer who just wants to speak to people, all people, and be heard. 

I am the writer who wants to make the words I say evoke true feelings in people who believe that they will never feel again.