These Unbearable Voices.

Something has happened to me in the last six months.

I became a writer. I write.

I mean I have always written, for academia, for research, for my career. These were much loved topics tenderly researched and presented to the world delivered with the finesse and surgical skill of a Tojo's omakase.

Fiction is different. It's like an all you can eat buffet at a greasy spoon. It's loud, it's messy and it's full of people you sometimes don't want to be around. Fat wankers stuffing their faces, college kids who complain loudly over the lack of imported beer on the menu, that one gross couple who shouldn't be fondling each other in front of the dessert bar.

It's raw, it's gross, it's amazing and it's mine, it's all in my head. Non fiction is carefully laid out, plotted and constructed from the ground up, using trusted sources as foundation.

My fiction is vomited onto the page, as though I've lost control, some base instinct has kicked in and is forcing my body to regurgitate that which has been brewing for years.

I have always been one of those people. You know the kind, the type who is perpetually 'working' on a novel. I had grand ideas, even started several works here and there but always seemed to fizzle out around chapter five.

"This would make a much better screenplay," I would tell myself, downloading DYI screen writing programs and making a go of it. Failing.

The second month of this year a mommy board I was a member of held a smut writing contest. I wrote a scene but didn't submit. I don't know why, what held me back. Ego perhaps.

I sent that scene to a few close friends and the result was an resounding "fuck yeah we want more".

So I started to write more, and the silly little scene fleshed out into a silly little book that I decided to self publish.

And here I am, book two about to go live and about a million voices in my head all fighting for release.

I can't stop writing now, I can't stop.

Each word I press out of me is sweeter than the last, each sentence promising relief from the crush of ideas, and each book will be better than those who went before it.

I am always good at what I choose to do, and I choose writing.

So excuse me while I stare at nothing over your shoulder while you are talking, I am busy composing worlds and releasing characters into the light.