I write because I love words, and I love how they can be magically put together to form gorgeous phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. Yes, I find words to be attractive. But writing often starts out as a messy tangled up wad of thoughts that need to be released. Sometimes you think that the magic is going to spill out of you if you just have the right atmosphere, aesthetic, beverage, or mood. Other times, you wait for inspiration to strike. But if you look at the words of writers who have made it, you discover that writing isn't magical inspiration, it's hard work. It takes determination and commitment to start writing when you're not in the mood, and to keep writing after you've run out of coffee or wine or sleep. Writing is not a gift that you either have or you don't. It can be acquired from practice and exercise, just like learning an instrument or playing a sport, and the more you practice, the more polished you'll become. If you don't believe me, here are twelve writer's to tell you what writing is really all about:

1. "I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say." -Flannery O'Conner

2. "My head is a hive of words that won't settle." -Virginia Woolf

3. "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." -Ernest Hemingway

4. "Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart." -William Wordsworth

5. "When fear creeps up your spine, start writing. Shake if off, word by word, and look at the splinters of fear on the floor, shining like broken glass." -unknown

6. "I never wait for inspiration to strike. That would be a long, sad wait. Successful writing is one part inspiration and two parts sheer stubbornness." -Gillian Flynn

7. "I spill words like water and hope through the sound of them dripping that if enough of them fall, you will want nothing more than to swim inside them." -Tyler Knott Gregson

8. "I write to save someone's life, probably my own." -Clarice Lispector

9. "What doesn't kill us gives us something new to write about." -Julie Wright

10. "A writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories." -John Irving

11. "We write down made-up stories to tell the truths we wish could say out loud." -unknown

12. "Don't be a writer. Be writing." -William Faulkner

If your mind is "hive of words that won't settle," try writing them out, no matter how jumbled or broken they look on paper. At least the broken thoughts are then on your paper instead of in your mind, and the more you write, the more fluid your pen will become. If you wish you could write, then write. Just write.