Writing is a labor of love, whose reward is neither riches or fame but the thrill of publication. The gut wrenching, heart racing thrill; the adrenaline and high of knowing that someone may find pleasure in the adventure of your words…the words you have bled on paper, the words your heart spills out and your mind wonders if you have gone too far. Will your work be welcomed and admired, or rejected and ridiculed? Either way, you have accomplished something. You have finished a work that will last forever.

It is not labor of the hands, a work of land that will be overtaken by weeds if neglected, a building one day destroyed by rot. No, it is a manuscript of words that, no matter what decade, what millennial, should a reader choose to pick up your work, it will not be overtaken by weeds or destroyed by rot -it will be the same tower of words and thoughts that it was the day you had guts enough to write them.

Writing is a labor of love, and certainly a labor with delayed gratification. The toiling hours spent and for what? You don’t know, and you won’t know until you are finished…until the work is complete and in the hands of the unforgiving critics you call your readers. You wonder if you will ever write again after the mental strain and anguish of your inspired and completed work. You realize no one, or perhaps few, will understand the work that was involved, the exhaustion of your experience.

But after a few weeks off, free from brooding over the keyboard, life begins to inspire you again as a new story begins to form and overtake your thoughts. And you return to your keyboard, to a labor of love…to the addiction of the rush you feel upon completion and publication.