When I was extremely young I remember being bored with movies. You always knew the "good guys" would win, and there would always be a happy ending. I complained about it to my parents once and said, "when I grow up, I'm going to write a story without a happy ending!" I don't remember what they said (because even then I was far more interested in what I had to say than what anyone else did) but I imagine it was something along the lines of, "why? don't you want to see the happy ending?" at which point I probably would have said, "not when it's so obvious how things will turn out, it's boring."

After a while I realized that not everyone could predict the way stories would turn out. Many people assumed, believed there would be a happy ending, but they couldn't guess at the events leading to it they way I could, so they were still impressed by them. Of course I was still entertained, but it was never really what I wanted. I expect this was what made me start seriously writing stories in the first place. And then a time came when my mind flew too fast through my own stories as well. I could see the ending, or, more often than not, 20 or 30 possible endings and how to navigate the characters to each one of them. My mother once told me I was writing to solve my own worries vicariously. I never wrote about people who had any specific details that were the same as my own situations, but I'm sure in a way I was doing just that. Once I could see the end of my story it meant I'd solved the problem and so I stopped.

I am afraid to write. The me of long ago wrote amazing things, scary things, funny things, things that no one else could imagine and everyone always loved. The me of some time later thought I couldn't do it anymore and so I "killed" my writer self. In writing. It was clever and it was sad but it worked too well and in the end I became convinced that part of me was really gone. For years now I've been afraid. Afraid that I had no more ideas, but suddenly I do. It seems as soon as I can write one down I've thought of two more. Of course they come now, it's always at the time when I have too many things to do. When I need to focus on serious things, when I'm stressed, when I'm sick, I'm always more creative (...which would explain the incredible talent I showed in high school...barely sleeping or eating, sick 8 months out of the year, and always, always worrying...) but I won't complain. Whether it's because my brain has finally reached the level of uncertainty it needs to produce things, or because I've finally come close to turning back into who I was before I "died", or because someone else is influencing me, the seal seems to have been broken...at least for now...

If you understand how a writer's mind works, you'll lose all the pleasure in reading a book.