Writing is like Not smoking

Nobody cares if you do it or not. Deciding not to smoke might save your life, even if it drives you crazy. People, a few, might care that you save your own life. But in the larger scheme of things, one life is, well, up to you.

Same goes for writing. Deciding to write will drive you crazy. It may save your life. One voice in the scheme of things, probably doesn’t make much difference. Again, it’s up to you.

The clever analogy could end here were it not for one mysterious fact: this is all true only for some people. I must be very clear about this: not everybody has to face the decision of whether or not to smoke. To the rest of the world, this struggle can seem at times tragic, at others, quaint. It can also seem silly, maddening, or ridiculous to those who don’t have to decide to quit because they never started. The obvious question, Why start then? leads to my main argument: some of us are born to smoke.

Either our parents both smoked or one did, or they were addicted to other things, like, say, misery. Or they were simply strangers to us. Then again, it might have nothing to do with our parents, just luck, or luck’s opposite, to be born with the right combination of nervous intelligence, hyper-acute awareness of all senses, especially sound, leading to a mild-to-moderate, almost-constant discomfort with our physical selves, a general illness-at-ease. Running parallel to this host of bothers is a freight train of need. An overwhelming, intense, ubiquitous need to be understood. To announce who we are in as many ways as possible, to as many people as possible with the desperate hope that somebody might get it.

There it is: the profile of a born smoker. The need blossoms into a pressing desire to be heard, heard precisely, to hit the mark, to make sense, to express. Because smoking never does satisfy any of this, eventually we quit (or we don’t, and run the risk). Instead, we write. Because in all the ways smoking does not satisfy, language, having a voice, does.

Disclaimer: this does not mean all writers are smokers, or reformed smokers. One does not have to smoke to write. In the same way you can have a “dry alcoholic,” there are plenty of smokeless smokers. Birds for instance. Every single relative of the crow is a smoker. You can just tell.