All those voices... LWhitley

Why do I write? Could it be because of all the voices in my head? Voices that have been with me all of my life. As a child I made up stories that my barbies willingly played out. In my teen years I started writing poems, but they became so dark and piognant I stopped for fear I'd commit suicide. Not really but they were gloomy. Then the years just toppled on top of each other until 1998, my husband and I were on our way home from a family reunion in Palmyra Nebraska. A little speck of a town south of Lincoln. This is where my dad's family migrated to after coming here from Ireland in the 1800's. As we drove along the 2 lane stretch of high way, past the endless miles of corn fields, I couldn't stop myself from imagining what it must have been like to travel through this countryside in a covered wagon all the way from Champagne Illinois.




It couldn't have been easy I decided, my mind started to entertain thoughts and scenarios of how it must have been to come to a new country. When I got home I started to write the story that came to me seemingly out of nowhere, I didn't know what I was doing, because I'd never attempted something of this magnatude before. So I bought books on writing and charactors and any thing else that seemed relevant and studied like I was back in school. In the beginning I was nervous and scared, my stomach literally twisted into knots when I sat down at my computor, negative thoughts would threaten to chase me away. but I pushed them back and with trembling fingers continued to punch words into the keyboard. One of the first things I noticed, was when I was writing it wasn't the typed words I saw, it was like I was watching a movie unfold before my very eyes.I have yet to finish that first novel, and it's been years since I have read the manuscript, but there's still the glimmer of hope I'll pull it out one day and finish it.



I kept on writing because I discovered it to be the only way to quiet the voices in my head, I know it sounds schizophrenic but then I found this wonderful group with the same illness and knew I wasn't sick. I don't write to become rich and famous, not to say if I came upon the bridge of it I wouldn't turn it down either. Now all these years later unpublished with thousands of words written I couldn't imagine doing anything else but write.