It's realizing in the middle of a literature class that you can write better than half of those hacks, that you loved creative writing in elementary school, and why was it never offered after that? So you decide to be a writer and assess your progress later. When later comes with nothing published you don't care.

It's opening the mailbox at the end of a long day and finding a self-addressed stamped envelope wedged between the bills, feeling that little skip in your heart and wondering if this is the one, the agent or editor who read what you wrote and likes what you say.

Maybe it's sharing the process through teaching, sparking a young student's mind with possibilities, reading a great haiku by a troublemaker and a full-length novel by a seventh grader.

The joy of writing is picking up the pen after letting your story sit for too long. It's overcoming the fear that you forgot how to write, realizing with relief that it's like riding a bike. It's getting sucked back into the flow like a surfer drawn into a wave, then finding your angle and taking a ride.

It's watching your characters come alive as they lead you through their story, finding fault in your protagonist and hope in your antagonist, inviting unexpected sidekicks to stay. You get to play God in a fictional world, whipping up weather systems on a whim or mountains for good measure. It's you who decides who lives and who dies.

It's gathering by the fireplace to share your writing with those you trust, elevated cave people with expanded vocabularies, nodding and hunting for just the right word. With hot tea in hand and no holds barred, you let each other have it: the good, the bad, and how to make it better.

It's sharing your writing with those you've never met.

The joy of writing is realizing that the story you're telling is bigger than you are, that you are just the portal between the paper and something higher, that what you write might be more important than how you write it. It's walking around thinking about how tragic it would be if you suddenly got killed, not because you would die but because your story would never get told.

The joy of writing is making a difference, saving the world one word at a time. Your pen is your sword and your fight is whatever you believe in, so wield your weapon carefully, with subtlety, but without compromise. This joy sustains you through the long hours and months, transforming your toil into a labor of love.

And love. Will any of your words bring as much joy as the ones used to express your most euphoric emotions? From short notes left in secret places to rambling pages of private confessions, we've been doing it since we were kids. The ultimate collaboration? Two dusty shoeboxes filled with passionate letters, wedding vows written together and shared forever.

Like so many love stories both real and imagined, great joy often grows out of random coincidence, synchronicity that seems too contrived to include. For example, when a cloud drifted by and blocked the golden sunshine which blocked the colorful rainbow before it could be described, a neighbor stepped outside wearing a jacket with a red, orange, yellow, green, and purple rainbow design. Sometimes the cosmos align.