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Why do writers have to love words?



I've always had a hostile reaction to the romantic notion that writers are supposed to 'be in love with words'.

I just don't feel that emotion towards words, it's not natural and it doesn't fit, the same way I don't really find babies cute on a visceral level. Of course, you have to coo and make the right sounds when you see a baby, and when you're a writer, and someone says, "oh, so you love words then", you have to say "haha, of course...they are just so beautiful." Whilst inside I feel dead.

I guess I am the writer equivalent of a sociopath. I pretend to have normal writerly emotions to words and language when secretly I want to skin them alive.

Why DO writers have to be "in love" with words. I'm not. They are one of my worst enemies.
They only obfuscate meaning, get in the way of truth.

I only use words to make fun of them, to expose their deficiencies. You can build with them, make them do and say anything, and that's not romantic to me, that's horrific. Half of me thinks that words are the only way to get at meaning, and they other half thinks that if we had no words at all we might actually be able to communicate.
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