Once a Writer, Always a Writer

My Dad carried this tiny wooden desk into our house and my Mom set it up in the corner of the family room. As soon as its legs hit the floor I gravitated toward it, completely mesmerized. I don’t remember asking for it, but I distinctly remember Mom telling me, “This is your desk.”

I couldn’t have been older than 7, maybe 8. I had just started learning to read, write and compose sentences in school. I remember when I was a bit younger and first learning how to write my name, I’d write the letters too big and run out of space — so I’d just plop the final letter of my name in front of the first letter, since there was nowhere else to put it. This was sort of alarming to my teacher and parents, but it suited me just fine.

The desk was a light wood, buffed to a supple softness and finished with a gloss. It had a wood paneled slider that came down to cover the desk, almost as if you might find some bread being kept in there. I very much liked this shield to protect my desk when I wasn’t working at it, as I’ve always been rather private about my writing. It was the perfect little desk for me, in every way. I don’t even remember there being a chair; I didn’t care about anything but the desk cradling my notebook beneath my pencil’s sharp point, and the words pouring therefrom.

I remember sitting at the desk and writing stories. I’d be sitting there, totally enthralled in what I was writing — except I didn’t have all my letter combinations down yet, so I’d have to end my trance to call out to my Mom, “What makes the ‘th’ sound?” Then I’d wait, completely still and silent so I wouldn’t miss the answer, and as soon as I heard “…t-h-…” I’d be back in my own world, writing feverishly so that I might evade any more boundaries to my flow state.

I’d write so fast and so hard, I never actually learned to hold a pencil correctly. That didn’t matter — all that mattered was getting the words out before they were gone. I still to this day hold a pen in a totally mangled way and get hand cramps after a few minutes of frantic writing — but it’s always worth it in order to get the words down in the exact stream of consciousness which they come. I find it a funny little contradiction: for a writer to be so bad at writing itself.

So, I have always been a writer. I think any born writer will know what I mean when I say, it is not physically within my power to hold myself back from pen and paper when I have something to write. I will rudely interrupt conversations or get up and run to steal away to a quiet place or jump out of bed in the middle of the night, just for my pen to connect with the paper lining my notebook.

It’s an indescribable craving and blissful relief; the passion floods through my veins like a drug. It’s a brain absolutely lit up, a heart on fire and a hand that can never move fast enough. It’s an entire body integrated with one practice: it’s a holy union, a divine connection. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember — it’s just part of my very essence as a writer.

© 2021 Jessica Wolf