What Gives You the Urge?

Blatantly stealing this topic from Lia.

As my last 'non-Teaser Tuesday' post indicated, I wrote when I was younger. Okay, I wrote badly and some would argue that I write only marginally better today, but nonetheless, I've always written. I've been thinking a lot about my writing history this week. I was trying to remember where this inclination came from-- what made me sit down one day with pencil in hand and just write. Sadly, experiences in the aforementioned wasted, slacker, bad decisions youth relieved me of many brain cells and, for the life of me, I cannot remember when I first began to write. If memory serves, (even poorly), I was always doodling or writing down some odd character or line throughout my childhood.

I do remember who my first influence was, however. It was my mom. I recall having a Halloween poem to finish, some stupid time wasting assignment in my Reading class and I just didn't 'get' poetry. Thankfully, she did and she sat down like a woman possessed to finish the assignment for me. (That was the only time she did that...she was certainly a 'I'm not doing your homework for you' sort of mom). In any event, I watched in fascination as she scribbled on that thin piece of paper and wrote and wrote and wrote until she was satisfied. It was a funny little story and I remember thinking, "that was so cool."

As I got older, my writing experience shifted to very poorly (rhyming no less :P) pubsecent, emo poetry. I outlined a lot. I have boxes filled with notebook of WIPs or story ideas that will likely never be written. It wasn't until I was in college, much older than that sad little teenager, that I actually completed a story. For a grade. On a deadline. It was terrible, but still I did it and I like think I've gotten better, that I am no longer a slave to my emotions, rather, a slave to the muse.

Now I write because I must, because all those years of procrastination and letting my emotions force me into stories that were veiled attempts at exorcising my demons, have cultivated me, have changed me. I write because my characters want their stories told. I write because it's who I am, who I was always meant to be. I write because if I didn't, little else in my life would satisfy me. Now, I'm not speaking poorly about the relationships I have with others. I'm talking about the relationship I have with myself--the utter desperation that seems to be innately a part of every artistic person...that need to create.

So, my urge comes from two places, really:

1. From those loud little buggers that shout in my mind "tell everyone about us"

2. And from that part of me, the part that is likely akin to your own, that makes the sky green, creates worlds that are foreign and frightening and brilliant-- the same one that allows you to see what others cannot, the one some call imagination, some call the inner artist.

If I didn't have either of the above, I honestly don't know what I'd do with myself. To tell the truth, even thinking on that is the scariest thing I could imagine.

What about you? Where does your urge to write, to create come from?