To be a writer, one must write

These past few months I’ve been busy writing, mainly short stories, as well as a few poems.  There is a fire inside me... 

So many young artists have died, and their deaths encourage me to work harder and faster. The days of our lives are not guaranteed. Joyce Carol Oates says that to die in the
middle of a work is one of her terrible fears. For what happens to the unfinished piece? It is forever unexpressed. Even worse are the ideas that are never turned into the story, the poem, the novel. Like ghosts, like beautiful images glimpsed in dreams and them forgotten. I do not want to forget mine. I fight to
transcribe it to paper. I bury myself away. I will emerge later…