Why I Write - A Guest Blog by Josie Escobar

It’s always important to know why you write and why you want to write. This helps gaining more confidence within your own writing because no matter what you write, you know why you wanted to in the first place. Once you know why you write, you’ll discover your writing voice and the difference you want to make through your own work. You’ll open just a million more doors.


I write for interesting meaning and understanding, 
I write so people can be affected by my words, not for people to expect happy endings.
I write so I can discover something completely different and original about a subject, 
I write what people don't see, feel, or understand.


I write the story that wants to be written.


I write so that the musical words could mean something completely original, 
I write for the readers to be shocked in a heartbeat, a single thumping.
I write so the arrow can strike right in the center, then burn down the crumbling, black, target.
I write because sorrow doesn't need an ending, 


I write because we do.


I write so that the floating angels and burning flames can appear to be the most beautiful thing on earth, 
I write because I'm not commonly different, 
I write to make sure my soul is still living, 
I write with everything inside of me so I can let go of every living fume I've taken in, 
I write so that a flower could have a living heartbeat, 


I write because there are no limits.


I write so reality could be magic in its own way, 
I write to make readers cry of sadness, happiness, and longing.
I write so that a part of me can stand out more powerful
I write to make the most beautiful things, create its inner fire, and make that beauty worth it.
I write to tell people joy and happiness will not always due for justice in reality.


I write to clench at people's hearts and launch them in the gutter, 
so that life itself can escape its limits.

Thanks for guest blogging, Josie!
Visit Josie's blog:
http://youonlywritesomuch.blogspot.com/

Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing: Stories by Lydia Peelle

Hi, guys, sorry for my absence of late, I'm just...really lazy. Well, I've also been focusing on writing a lot lately, and I've actually sent a short story as well as a poem to literary magazines in attempts for publication. So fingers crossed at that happening. (As always, you can find my writing through either Figment or Goodreads...ask if you want to and I'll give you a link.) Aside from that, I've been finding myself more and more surrounded by people who care about books, so I can actually talk about books to real people now, which is awesome.


Now, down to business...


From Goodreads: Peelle has crafted eight stories that capture these moments: summers riding horses, life as a carnival worker, kidding season on a farm. Quiet and telling, her stories are filled alternately with supreme joy and with deep sorrow, desperation and longing, dreams born and broken -- set in landscapes where the clock ticks more slowly. Her landscapes are the kind of places you want to run away from, or to which you wish you could return, if time hadn't irrevocably changed them. A single thread runs through each of these stories, the unspoken quest to answer one of life's most primal questions: Who am I?


My review: 4.5/5
Very good collection of short stories. Lydia Peelle was an impressive writer, and I'm happy to have noticed this one out in perfect among the tornado of used books that is my local bookstore. The stories were realistic, fun, and had a great common theme among them - a feeling of something that is lost, or something that once was. My god, some of these stories were just beautiful.
The only thing that slowed the book for me is that it isn't exactly fun to read. That's usually what writing that's true to real emotion is like, though, because it is not escapism, so it's not something that I fault the book for.
For the record, my favorite story was the title story, 'Reasons For and Advantages of Breathing.'
I will definitely be giving some of these stories rereads.

Thanks for reading, and for, like, still existing even when I'm too busy to get on my blog for months at a time.