When reading a book, one hopes it doesn’t turn into a painful process. Predictable is bad enough. Laborious is acceptable if the labor produces fruit. But with painfully bad writing, all one can do is grab a hatchet, slice off its head, and bury it.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik Bad Writing Creativity On Being A Rat Writing Writing Life

I’ve had a fountain pen surgically implanted in my left index finger to save trouble. My body is tattooed with line upon line of truth, fiction, and a not-always-pleasing mix of the two.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik Creativity On Being A Rat Rats Writing Writing Life Writing Process

I suck the words word-dryto me, assimilated orderly at breakeye speedstill hard and hardersofter thenline-lined book-dry‘til not a dropof water-bloodfrom oak and elmand authored menis left to whisper“Read…

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik Creativity On Being A Rat Poetry About Writing Reading Writing Writing Life Writing Process

When I pour a bowl of Uncle Sam’s cereal, I never know if I should stand when I eat, salute it first, or simply hum the Star Spangled Banner between mouthfuls.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik Creativity On Being A Rat Writing Writing Life Writing Process

Split your skull—a hatchet works well enough. Take a more delicate instrument—a scalpel, perhaps—and make a hand-sized slit; it doesn’t matter where. Reach in (no glove needed), plunge down to the very bottom, pinch the inside layer of membrane and yank, hard. If it feels like you’ve just turned your brain inside out, you have. Writing is brain surgery, pure and simple.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik Creativity Hard Writing On Being A Rat Writing Writing Is Work Writing Life Writing Process

This piece of earth I billet grows small. Bullets of time dart past, dropping shards of opportunity at my feet. And until the rift that surrounds my decaying body clamps shut—swallows me up like so many remains—I army on, simultaneously ignoring and saving my comrades in the hole.Such is a writer’s life.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik Creativity On Being A Rat Rats Writing Writing Life Writing Process

Writing is making love under a crescent moon: I see shadows of what’s to come, and it’s enough; I have faith in what I can’t see and it’s substantiated by a beginning, a climax, an ending. And if it’s an epic novel in hand, I watch the sunrise amid the twigs and dewing grass; the wordplay is what matters.Simply put, I’m in love, and any inconvenience is merely an afterthought.The sun tips the horizon; the manuscript is complete. The author, full of profound exhaustion, lays his stylus aside. His labor of love stretches before him, beautiful, content, sleeping, until the next crescent moon stars the evening sky.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik Love Of Writing On Being A Rat Writing Writing Life

Oh God, for a few who will love me in tiny ways every single day of my flashing existence. For a mere one or two who will treat me like the trash I am, who will love the smell of garbage and rummage through the bin of my failings to find the wrapped cheeseburger they can do without but consider long enough to get their taste buds used to the idea. Oh for a melodious tongue to sing me a song about french fries.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik Creative Process On Being A Rat Writing Writing Life Writing Process

Today I fed him right off the bat, and only checked Facebook twice.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik Inspiration On Being A Rat The Muse Writing Life Writing Muse

I read a book, am vortexed in with no escape; my face contorts, eyelids frost, breath comes short, body longs, heart stop-starts. Who’s to say too much won’t kill me? Who’s to say I care?

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik On Being A Rat Rats Writing Writing Extremes Writing Life Writing Process

Writing is a beast to tame, an energy to transform. Whip that toad into a prince and French kiss it to life. We start at the top but keep looking down, from macro to micro, from what could work to what does—but start with the dream. Nothing is real apart from the clouds, and all clouds pass with life in their wake—some rain thoughts.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik On Being A Rat Stream Of Consciousness Writing Writing Challenges Writing Life Writing Process

The Page awaits the Inspiration even as Inspiration roams the world of man, seeking a Page upon which to unfurl itself, body and soul, bare yet clothed in immortality if not immediacy.And the gods said, “Let there be a Page, and many a Page,” and there was a Book. And we saw that the Book was good.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik Books On Being A Rat Writing Inspiration Writing Life Writing Process Writing Style

If a book can save—redeem us from the mediocrity of the mundane—surely, there must be a God.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik Books On Being A Rat Reading Reading For Life Wonder Of Books Writing Writing Life

Writing makes me hard, like a fisherman, and brown from the heat. Tossing out and reeling in is a job for visionaries and those with calloused hands.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik On Being A Rat Visionaries Writing Effort Writing Is Hard Writing Life

The setting sun threatened to consume me—it could have, you know. It would have been a beautiful death with an honorable eulogy: slain by a magnificent slice of piercing orange energy. I simply turned and walked away; I would live another day.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik Death By Sun Nature On Being A Rat Rural Living Sun Writing Writing Process

PLEASE TELL ME YOU KNOW OF SYLVIA PLATHConventions bleed my soulsqueeze me oldwear me grey like a headstone in transit.It’s tradition and form—fear of the unknown—driving me deadin tight spaces darkly.I cry aloudbut who can hearwhen I stand alonein the middle of an art show….

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik On Being A Rat Poetry Rats Sylvia Plath Writing Writing Process

I don’t need to write. Madness or suicide are other options, though not nearly as compelling. But I want to create; I hope to create worlds in my own image, admittedly a self-centered plan. I want others to understand me better, pay more attention to me, like or love me for who I am. Maybe that’s it. Or maybe I should simply learn to say, “Let’s have lunch.

~ Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik On Being A Rat Writing Writing Process