Why I Need to Write

I want to write about everything and all things. I want to write for and about the down-trodden, the maladjusted, the introverts, the mentally ill, the dispossessed.  I want to write to incur pain if it means enlightenment in the end. I want to write about those who are spurned by society.  I want to write about the things I want to know more about, to become a citizen scientist, a citizen philosopher, a citizen storyteller, a citizen poet.  I want to write about the things which would make people refer to me as a social irritant. I want to write six days a week, all the time, with Monday being my day of rest.  Even on Monday I would write but not because I felt compelled to do so, only that it is something to do.  I want to be a rock for the forgotten, if they will allow it.  I want to make people cry with my poetry, awe them with my fiction, and make them angry with righteous indignation with my essays.  I want to make the scales fall from their eyes so that can see, feel, and speak the Truth.  I want to rail against the darkness yet realize that the darkness is also my friend and companion.  I want to write so that there is always the danger of a turd in society's punch bowl, a gob of spit in the face of tradition, the black ice under the feet of the government.  I want to show that tradition is the collective laziness that prevents people from evolving as both a species and individuals. I want to write to celebrate and acknowledge and speak for both the dead who cannot defend themselves and the living that needs to speak up for themselves as well. I need to write because I must, as part of right action and good trouble. I need to write with the goal of being a force in nature, to be heard and to make peace with my own mind. It doesn't even matter who reads my words, I need to write to cut through the miasma of crippling self-doubt and blurred vision.