A couple of days ago I talked to boyfriend about my Nanowrimo plot and how the outlining went, and I said something like ‘Oh, only two more weeks until I have to start!’
I immediately corrected myself and said ‘I mean, until I want to start, of course.’
Boyfriend turned, looked at me for a few seconds and then said ‘No, you write because you have to.’
He knows me so well snif 
Tanja
NaNoWriMo has the great merit of forcing one to change its schedule. Why some (most?) of us don’t complete anything? Why do we sketch pages after pages, without coming to an end? Because of so many other (compelling) things to do.
On the contrary, if writing is high on your schedule, you write and write. It’s your duty, as any other duty.
Paolo
But,[i]for why?[/i], do you have to?
Are you fighting, [i]inner demons[/i], or prhaps youre a prisoner of, tyranical and powerful literary/creative instincts? I`m curious as to, why?.
Take care Tanja 
Vic
Because sometimes my muse sticks her long, sharp fingernails deep into my brain and tells me that I shall know no peace until I write this story. 
P.S. BF has shown major sign of being a keeper. You’ll need an SO that can handle being with a writer.
I don’t know if I “write”. I think just have episodes of “word vomit”. 
I write because the voice in my head whispers weird stuff and makes me do it. I wish it wouldn’t happen when I was riding on a bike into london for 40 minutes though, because invariably I’ve forgotten all the amazing things I was supposed to write by the time I get there.
Because if I don’t, it feels like stabbing a huge knife in my heart and twisting it 
So yeah, I think you could say my creative instincts holds me hostage 
Tanja
– who spend some time making the best calling cards for herself and slapping ‘creator’ on it, because she had too:
ang on!! How come westies gone from cutenpretty, to beautiful?
In the piccy (love yre work, by the way), I see five tannies (redheads). Two happy n three very cranky ones. What was on y mind when y did the three cran :imp: kies? Behind my idiots facade, I am seriously interested in what makes people want/have to write. Im talking [b][i]need/want[/i][/b] in real terms, not abstract. I suppose the kind of answers Im looking for, would tell me in terms I can grasp, exactly why you want/need, and what you hope to achieve. Also, do you actually ,‘enjoy’, the writing/creative process, and do you experience satisfaction during and upon completion?
Take care
Vic
The brief (and nearly useless) answer is that, when it’s working – when the ideas and the dialogue and the images and the patterns flow, when nouns and verbs leap to the fore and adverbs and prepositions quietly steal into the background – when that happens, it’s glorious. I lose myself in the story, seldom happier. It’s what happens when I find a role to immerse myself in (Desmond Drumm in Da was the most recent). Satisfaction is too gentle a term for the sensation. Elation, at peak moments, is not too strong.
From talking with other writers and other actors, I’m convinced that it’s a bi-polar phenomenon: the highs, monumental; the lows, abyssal.
Phil
I made the crankies years ago. Not sure why, but I thing I felt pretty cranky at the time myself
I made a couple of shirts with it too, and when my friend in London had it on people approached him telling him they felt exactly the same, hahaha
(He got free beers, I think)
I have this hunger (for lack of better word) to create. Either write or draw or paint or other things like scripting, none of which I do often enough to satisfy the hunger (silly me). I don’t know where this urge comes from. When I give in to it I can get annoyed and frustrated and angry with making the thing I want to make. I’ll get worked up usually. If that doesn’t happen I know I have not given it my all, and that I really should, otherwise I won’t feel satisfied once I finish. I need to lose myself in it, like Phil says. I haven’t ever felt more alive than the times I’ve lost myself in it (unlike other things in which one can lose oneself, I believe this a good thing).
I need to do this because I if I don’t, I feel like an empty shell of myself.
Unfortunately, I also guilt myself in at least trying to spend more time on things I ‘have’ to do (like cleaning the house) instead of those things I need to do. Telling myself that I can’t possibly do the things I need to do, if I have this giant pile of laundry waiting for me, which usually means I don’t do anything.
Not a simple answer, and I don’t think the simple answer really exists (sorry)
Tanja
Can’t sing, play an instrument, draw, or paint.
Writing is when I truly feel creative. There is no greater drug than the alpha state.
And there we have the short and simple answer
Tanja
Voice activated recorder and wearing a microphone (maybe one of the headset/boom microphone types). Probably take a bit of tweaking to have it detect your voice but not the wind noise, and one of those microphone covers that are supposed to cut out wind noise.
You’d have to edit out all the swearing at drivers who seem incapable of seeing a bicycle, despite lights, reflectors, and blindingly bright coloured clothing, of course.
Hm, I may have just given myself an idea; I commute by bike, a bit over a half hour each way. I shall have to try this.