Writing on tangents because I’ve run out of notebooks…

I wrote a lot in my school books, but never on the subject which I was meant to be writing on. I remember my hand cramping from gripping my pen too tightly. It was an endless race to try and keep up with the workings of my imagination. The teachers only smiled. My friends shrugged and continued their conversation. Pages and pages of lined paper were filled up as I poured out the words, sentences and paragraphs which had built up throughout the day.

I went on to university and my addiction to the written word only grew. When my notebooks had all been used up from cover to cover, I wrote in the margins of these very pages; on the backs of assignments handed back by professors; on receipts I found in the depths of my handbag; on scrap pieces of junk mail; on used envelopes and spare napkins.

When I worked at the local cafe, only the first few pages of my notepad contained customer orders. The rest was host to a multitude of random thoughts and imaginary worlds I simply couldn’t hold back. I would stop midway through frying a burger just to add one more line to my handwritten mosaic of words. Along with a few greasy fingerprints.

And now, six years later, I have finally run out of places to write and that is why I am starting this blog. Because nothing can hold back the imagination. Nothing can satiate the basic human instinct to create. As I spend the majority of my days interacting with strange and captivating customers at the local bookshop, I still feel this urge to write on a daily basis. That’s definitely a plus to working in a bookshop. Everyone who comes in has a story to tell and every scenario holds some kind of inspiration.

Writing is not always a choice. It’s a compulsion. An addiction. A need. A desire.

I wonder if there is a word to describe people who are attracted to language… Not just any words, but beautiful combinations of words. Words which evoke power and emotion. Words that startle. Words that outrage. Words which wrap themselves around your entire being and induce the deepest sorrows and passions.

I want to dive into the ocean of language. I try to cover myself with strange and beautiful words and wear them like a cloak. I let them take over until every world which exists within each word sends a thrill through my body.

To be perfectly honest, I haven’t run out of notebooks. As long as my pay goes through from work, I will always have pens and paper handy. It’s just that writing is a fairly solitary activity, and even if no one ever reads the words you have bled out onto the page, it is nice to think that maybe someone, someday, might stumble across them.

~ Ekaterina