“It´s a beautiful day outside,” whispered the demon in that honey-sweet voice. “You should go outside and enjoy it. It´s not healthy to spend all your time in here, watching the world through the window.”
“I have an idea,” said the angel. “Do you want to hear about it? I think it´s really cool, and I think you´ll really like it.”
“I am an empty chasm you will never adequately fill,” said the page, staring blankly.
“All of you are right,” said the writer, and put pen to paper anyway.
Sometimes I sleep very soundly, and though I dream, the dreams have faded to wisps by the time I have risen close enough to consciousness to apprehend them. Other times I dream closer to the surface, and though it’s not quite that awesome lucid dreaming experience where you can make yourself fly or cause a tiger, I am able to dream my dreams in a sort of close third-person POV. What I mean by this is that I experience them as something outside myself while having some insight into what’s happening and why. Sometimes these dreams are about writing.
I had one of those last night. Continue reading “A Look at the Machinery Behind the Curtain”
So, I was sitting in a cafe today, having a not-bad cup of coffee and staring another blank sheet of paper in the face. I finished the story I was working on last night in a different cafe (with much better coffee; you wouldn´t believe how hard it is to find a decent cup down thisaway), and I´m really trying to get into the habit of writing everyday, both for the sake of my sanity and because a lot of people whose opinions I respect seem to think it´s a really good idea.
I´m trying, if you will, to change my conception of being a writer from something you are to something you do.
So anyway, there I was, coffee half-gone and going cold, pen a-tapping at the page, and twenty-seven light-blue lines staring back at me, daring me to get scrawling. Problem was, I was fresh out of ideas at the moment. Continue reading “I Think My Muse Has ADD”
Here I am, half a world away from the place I´ve called home for the last dozen-plus years, living the dream, wandering a new continent, and the longer I am here, the more I realize that what I need to do is write.
There´s a part of me that wants to be disappointed. I can write anywhere, this part of me says. Why can´t I put it aside, make the most of this opportunity to see new places and explore new things? The pressure is immense. After all, when, realistically, will I be here again? I should make the most of it while I can. All this business of facing my personal darkness and finding something like redemption or purpose in my work can be done later, when I get home and have nothing better to do.
When I look back, this part of me says, I will regret squandering this opportunity to explore. The worst, most insidious thing is this: the voice is right. It has a legitimate point.
After all, what is the purpose of travel, if not to see new places, meet new people, explore the vast and wondrous variety this world has to offer? To shuck the comfort and security of the familiar and find yourself anew, shorn of the habits of mind and life that normally circumscribe your passage through this world, and, you know, have a little fun while you do it?
Thing is, all that shucking and shearing and finding myself anew has led me to a different conclusion than the part of me that says I need to make the most of my journey-as-journey says it should. That what I thought this journey would do, take me outside myself, offer me respite from the darkness always hovering over me, is not what this journey has done. What this journey has done is, rather, the complete opposite: it has brought all the things I thought it would liberate me from to the forefront, and demanded that I face them.
Son of a bitch. Continue reading “The Conspiracy, For and Against”
I´ll start by saying that I never have been much good at being happy. Oh, I´ve had my moments, even periods of weeks and months when I was genuinely, truly happy, when the stars were aligned and things were going well and I recognized it and was grateful.
But those times never lasted, and when the light went away, the darkness welled up from its hidey-hole, and there I was again. I´ve tried to fill that hole with all kinds of things: sex, drugs, alcohol, food, friends, travel, books, jokes, you name it. None of it ever works for long. Continue reading “Learning the Hard Way (Again)”
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