Writing is like a semi-symbiotic relationship, say with a leech. Sure there’s the life draining part, pain and possible transmission of disease, but it can also be purifying and extract that which you need desperately to remove from yourself. It’s hard for me to believe that I largely took 15 years off from writing. I must have been doing a lot of humming and whistling in the dark to make it that long. Too long without and you lose part of yourself. But too much in a single stretch – like how my friend John described it as ‘word vomiting’ – can drain all of your resources and leave you emotionally parched, anemic, and undernourished.