I write and play because it's in my blood. I'm not as much inspired as driven by an obsession to write.
I have been writing ever since I can recall. I wrote stories and poems in my early teens. I was the editor of my high school paper. I've worked for newspapers, magazines, book publishers and web sites for the past 40 years - writer, editor, reporter. I've published poems, stories, columns, features, reports, news, opinions, editorials, travelogues, essays, even a book a computer book).
I've never published any songs (I've written a few), and never had a novel published (again, written a couple), but there's still time...
I can't go a week without writing something. I write a regular blog, make posts here and on other forums. I write at work - customers' brochures, flyers, resumes and so on. I continually rewrite my web pages. I can't stop posting here, either. I just have to write. Just look at what I've done with this post! I'm happiest when I can be creative.
For me words have a life of their own, as much a living part of my world as my dog, my cats, the birds outside my window, my wife, my friends. I hate to see them abused or mistreated - bad spelling, poor grammar, abusive punctuation, inept capitalization - as much as I hate to see any animal or child abused. Bad language is to me like someone using a ukulele to hammer nails is to many of you.
Music is different, but also similar. I play because it fulfills a need to make music. I can spend hours noodling on a uke, without actually playing a song all the way through. Just experimenting, trying chord patterns, strummming, picking, making the strings sing out in new or different ways.
It's like writing in one sense - I like to play with words, to work with them, to build sentences and paragraphs, to construct articles and stories like an architect designs a building. I do the same with music; assembling the bits and pieces into something that often resembles a song, more often a meander through tones and rhythms. But I don't do it nearly as well. More passion than talent in my music.
Perhaps some of it is hereditary. Just recently I learned about my father's musical background. While he lived, he never told me about it - I learned from an aunt that my grandmother played ukulele, my grandfather played piano and my father played banjo at family singalongs. Or possibly banjo uke. And my grandfather was a reporter for a newspaper. Writing and music making seem to run in that side of the family!