eWriteLife Blog

Some time ago, Aileen Santos, a good friend of mine shared a creative writing prompt about what writing feels like. People started writing in to share their thoughts and words:

Writing is like a balloon in your head, and someone
starts squeezing it and squeezing it, and when it
finally pops all that pressure is gone and a
beautiful story is left.

— Shaun O’Brien

Writing is a river flowing in an undetermined
direction, yet in one path. The river picks up
everything it can carry, as a writer writes all the
thoughts that come to him.

— Yared Negussie

Writing is like having a carrot in front of you,
dangling at the end of a long stick — the carrot
is your book; the stick, the obstacles you go
through to write that book. If you are a writer,
you don’t just chase the carrot and give up.
Instead, you chew the stick to reach the carrot.
And you’ve got your book.

— Shery Ma Belle Arrieta

Writing is like my therapist,
I can tell everything.

— Elizabeth Schmidt

Writing is like opening the gates of a huge ancient
dam, and letting the water, penned up for ages, full
of potential but having no outlet, loose, to roar
over the spillways and down through the valley, a
force of nature, irresistable, sweeping great rocks
of ego and resistance before it.

— Mark Ray

Writing is like putting all my eggs, scrambled of
course, into one basket, and serving them to you on
a plate for digestion.

— Judith Lantz

I feel like I will explode if I am not able to see on
paper the things that are important to me.

Sometimes it is the wonderful sense of awe I feel
when I see our angelic, wide-eyed little girl sees
something for the first time, and I wonder if I also
had that same wonderment but allowed adulthood to
cloud my memory.

Other times it is the fear I feel when the phone
rings late at night and I feel my heart do a skip
wondering if my grown son is okay or if the street
has claimed one more loved one.

What ever it is that is in my head seems to scream
to be put in writing so that maybe someone will know
my thoughts.

— carla

Writing is like going over the edge of a steep hill
on a tobbagan. You think that you’re going one
place but you usually wind up in another.

Writing is like going for deep psychoanalysis. It’s
very therapeutic. And it’s more fun than the average
joe can imagine.

I think everyone should be a writer.

— Gene Woolcott

It’s like running through the woods, real fast. You
kind of know where you’re going, but things keep
popping up in front of you, to the side of you. You
duck and you dodge, weave and bob, and maybe you make
it out alive. You might even get to where you
thought you were going in the first place.

— anthony zenkus

It’s like taking your heart, your feelings, your
soul, tearing them out, and putting them on display
for all to see, or to destroy.

It is an exhilarating feeling.

— Anson Smith

It feels like drowning in your thoughts and ideas
and then when you finish you come up for air.

— Sara Porter

It’s really like a love affair. When the writing
comes to me easily, like when things are going right
between two lovers, it’s heaven. And when he goes
away, like when I get writer’s block, you miss him
terribly and want him back with you.

— jhoanna calma

It’s like being an actor whose craft must be
meticulously studied if it is to appear real, and yet
has to maintain complete spontaneity. It is the
balance, the interchange, of instinct and form that
makes up brilliance.

— Melanie Alford

Writing is like drowning. Ideas and fears and
fragments swarm around you, pulling you under. Each
word that you write is a stroke, some strong and some
weak, but all of them are pulling you out of the
morass, and back onto dry land.

— kimberly skopitz

The need to write is like the need to be fed: You
will not be satisfied until you are nourished.

— jbur641500

Writing is like a child with a yo-yo, the more you
play around with it, the more you can do. You
develop your own style and are able to captivate an
audience with tricks. Ultimately the goal is for
people “around the world” to admire and assess the
stylized work. Unfortunately, most of us writers
find inspiration while “walking the dog.”

— Jason Frye

It’s an adrenaline surge rushing through your body.
You have this spark of an idea that keeps threatening
to burst into flames and you have to get the words
out on paper to match this emotion or picture in your
head. After this comes the work of cleaning up the
mess that you made.

— Janet West

Writing is complete and unbridled control over the
uncontrollable: the land and its weather, people and
their thoughts, feelings and actions. I could tilt
the universe on a whim, its fate in my possession.
Writing is a drug, a rush, a therapy.

— Nicole Alexander

Writing is a force of nature.

Life, a new reality, is created with each stroke of
your pen.

— jacqui p

There’s freedom in the written word that is limited
only by your own self-judgement.

— Mary

Writing is like going to a relative’s house, because
it can be fun if you want it to be. At a relative’s
house you can play games and talk and enjoy it or
you can sit and pout and be a bum. In writing you
can reach deep inside yourself and let your emotions
out or you can just think it is boring and it will
be no fun at all.

— Tom Foster

Writing is like sharing your deepest thoughts with a
friend. The paper is your friend and you can share
anything with it and know it will be confidential.
It is like putting your thoughts under lock and key.

— Merlin

Writing is like a cold glass of lemonade on a hot
summer day.

— andy

Writing is like a dove flying in the wind. The wind
is the ink, and the clouds are the paper. As the
dove flies through the clouds with the wind beneath
its wings it makes sweet, sweet stories and poetry.

— Andy Tirevold

Writing is like tubing behind a boat because you are
always bouncing around and in writing you bounce
around looking for ideas and things to write about.

— Carla Tate

Writing is like life. There are good times when
everything seems to just flow and there are bad times
when I feel the well has run dry and wonder why I do
this.

There’s a risk in being a writer. Security is not
there most of the time, but fears are.

Will I have enough money for the bills by making
this my profession? Will I be appreciated or
scorned? Am I willing to open my heart and soul to
my readers and share who I am and what I believe
despite any anticipated criticism?

In the end, though, I could be nothing else but a
writer because ignoring the rewards as well as
the fears, a writer is who I am.

Writing allows me to transcend and be totally
authentic which is what we all seek in this life
to be fulfilled.

— Angie

Writing is like trying to mend an antique quilt when
you don’t know how to sew. Writing is like trying
to take the evershifting landscape of your mind and
trying to pin it down. Writing is like mining
through the wasteland of your soul for the few
worthwhile pieces that need to be shared.

— WendyVeith