Being Thankful For Writing

I'm thankful for writing today, on Thanksgiving Day.  So many memes on Facebook say that writing is like pulling out your own eyes and eating them (along those lines, anyway), but I don't believe that.

I'm thankful for writing because of the worlds it opens up to me, some with rolling hills ablaze with magic, others with distant star systems to explore.

I'm thankful for the characters I meet, and their stubborn refusal to stay passive, for the heartache their deaths (sometimes) bring, for their joys and successes, for the bumps and hills they climb to reach The End.

I'm thankful for story, for that thread that runs neatly through fiction, weaving a tale that helps make sense of the world around us, with its pain and confusion and powerlessness.

I'm thankful for my laptop, my coloured pens, my coiled notebooks, my desk and my comfy chair, for being that conduit for conveying ideas to words on a page.

I'm thankful for the friends I've made thanks to writing, for the people who have become like family, for those I'd call upon during bad days or to share my greatest joys.

I'm thankful for the community that gets words, that loves them as much as I do, and that meets online or in-person to share that love.

I'm thankful because I know that, in another time or another place, I wouldn't have even learned to read and write, and even if I had, I might be too terrified or too busy surviving to put word to page.

I'm thankful because I know that writing can be hard, it can be confusing, it can be downright frustrating and make you feel kind of ill. But it can also bring the greatest joys, successes and the best damn day dreams.

I'm thankful because I know that I choose to write, and that I can write, and that I live in a world with so many options for getting my words out there that I just want to hug all of publishing and all of writing and hold it close forever.

I'm thankful for words.

And I hope you are, too.