Writing is a fever, a mad cataract that blurs the world, a purple tinge that makes and unmakes things and gives feeling to the numb and ordinary. It's grit in your fingers. An itch in the scalp. It's the particle of food between your teeth, the mitochondria that pummels away unseen in cell and soft tissue. It's a cold rendering of a dream. The shadow of your real self. That thing that unknots your intestines, a diverticulum, a burst of cell and blood.  You may or may not write well, but its specter remains -- the ghost that haunts and taunts and makes you believe that you are somehow bigger than your knuckles or the pretzel you ate with your coffee or the blue sky.