I am having a bit of a writer's identity crisis. Let me begin with the preface that for all of the emotional glitter and romance attached to the notion of the "writer", and for all of the ways I have secretly (or not-so-secretly) delighted in the idea of the "suffering artist" who is cursed with a kind of numinous sensitivity to beauty, I remain skeptical of these artistic personas and the ways that they elevate and isolate the artist. I enjoy reading books about writing, for an example, but I nearly always begin to detect a kind of ethereal or emotionally indulgent tone that I find myself drawn to in some respects, but it also sets my mind thinking as to discerning where the lines went from a lovely arrangement into a tangled derangement. I know that some would grab their pitchforks and blazing torches in an effort to feed it to the flame, but my time in college has taught me the habit of slowing down before I start a witch hunt. It doesn't mean that she will survive the trial, only that the evidence must be picked apart by a lot of sharp objects under a steady eye before the gravel falls. So I read those books on the soul of the artist with a colorful palate, mixing the innocence of the dove and the wisdom of the snake.

All of that being said, I'm at a strange place in life as it relates to writing. As I grew from my childhood into a young adult, I spent many many hours a day simply writing about anything and everything. It was full of all of the drama of the 12-year-old's heart, with plenty of scenarios involving lingering crushes that rose and fell with the seats chosen from Sunday to Sunday and youth group to youth group, and a thousand other dilemmas of more and less weight filled those hundreds of pages. They were full of prayers and dreams, fantasy tales and entries from my best friends. They were full of many things only God would care about now, and God has (and had) way more grace for me than I have for myself now when I look back on them. But through it all, God grew a love for writing in me. So I dreamed, and I wrote, and I grew older. Few of the strong dreams from my childhood have died. They've only been refined and matured through the years. But that doesn't mean they have become any clearer through time. The bone structure is clearer, but I couldn't describe the face. It's still only a rough draft. 

There were some classes in college that nourished my dreams--they were not spoiled, but given a trellis and commanded to climb. We were taught how to dig and find the richest of foods to feed to our guests. I've come to flee from the prosaic and the utilitarian--I shy away from the route of offering a message in multi-vitamin form. I believe in the swathing of harmony and rhyme, of salting to-taste with a squirt of lime. As a college graduate, I still want us both--myself and the reader--to taste, see, feel--for the words to go down in such a way that the reader is satisfied with the fragrant Denouement, a dish cooked well done and golden on the edges.

 I want the reader to be filled.