"Keep up, Ceilí. We haven't much time." I pulled my sister's hand deeper into the forest. She whimpered quietly. I knew the running we'd done was too much on her, but I didn't have another choice. We had to keep going forward.

"Victeoiria..."

"No, Ceilí. We musn't stop. I see a field up ahead. We will rest there."  The sun was just going down beyond the hills of Álainn-Ionad, a tiny Gaelic city next to Ireland. It is not considered part of Ireland, but it is not a country of its own. 

We all want to be many things. For example, I want to be, firstly, a writer. Also, I want to be a beekeeper, sail-boater, published author, botanist, and possibly mother someday. And the list keeps growing. 

But with all these ideas, interests, and ambitions comes discouragement, because it is very easy to let that mean little voice inside tell you, "You can't do that." And you... you believe that little voice. It is hard to squash it. 

This letter is not intended to be taken too seriously.  Rather, it takes itself too seriously, which is what made it so amusing to write.

 - - -

An Encyclical on the Use of Lukewarm Words by A fellow Sinner in the matter of grammatical and linguistical crimes

Dear Friends,

I'm never afraid when I am with you,
nor when I have an audience
I'm always onstage,
the lights in my face,
never out of costume

But only I know about the times
standing alone in a library
looking at endless lists of names
and wondering,
how on earth will I ever be good enough
How on earth will I ever be
the voice, the chartalan of powerful words
of worlds I've never seen?

If you’ve ever poised a pencil over paper for long hours
You might just be a writer
If you know that recording stories isn’t a frolic in the flowers
You might just be a writer

If you’ve written down a battle and felt you’re in the fight
You might just be a writer
If you’ve struggled with a paragraph far into the night
You might just be a writer

If you’ve ever felt that what you write will never be its best
You might just be a writer
If you feel you could writer forever and never take a rest
You might just be a writer

“I love the writing life,” was the last sentence I wrote in my journal before I went to sleep last night. And it’s absolutely true – most of the time. Of course, if you flip back through the earlier pages of my journal, you’ll find at least three or four entries declaring my complete frustration and disgust with writing and everything pertaining thereunto. Those entries are absolutely true as well. Which made me start thinking: if I really love writing, why do I get so frustrated with it? If I really hate it, why do I devote so much time and energy to it?

I have a plan: lets write a story together. The way this'll work is this::::

I plop down in front of my computer; placing my hands on the computer and type for several minutes, the silence broken solely by the tapping of my keys.
Resting my chin on my hand, I scroll down the page, reading what I have written. Muttering to myself, I delete several lines and try to mash these jumbled letters and words into sentence fragments, then sentences, then finally something worth showing. At last I decide it is good enough and start to leave, I hover between leaving and staying, finally raising the mouse and in one, hard stroke deleting everything I had just done.

Lifeless white, a waiting page
Speechless, I find myself
Lacking the wisdom to reach the heights
Lacking the love to touch the heart
Lacking the art to touch the soul
While all the right words run away

Formless, thoughts dance through my mind
Desperate prisoners, tightly shut
Lacking the breath to give them life
Lacking the key to break them free
Lacking the form to give them voice
While all the right words run away