Quoted in the opening pages of Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives by Louise DeSalvo. While I in no way claim the writing chops of Ray Bradbury, I can hear in his words a truth for me.
So while our art cannot, as we wish it old, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amadst it all….
Writing is survival. …
Not to write, for many of us, is to die.
I have learned, on my journeys, that if I let a day go by without writing, I grow uneasy. Two days and I am in tremor. Three and I suspect lunacy. Four and I might as well be a hog, suffering the flux in a wallow. An hour’s writing is tonic. I’m on my feet, running in circles, and yelling for a clean pair of spats.
RAY BRADBURY
Zen in the Art of Writing