the emotional insanity of writing

Sometimes, often in the first 100 pages of a first draft, the story soars along, and each night firing up the laptop is like tuning into a brand new episode of a favorite show. What will happen next? The characters phone in and dish. I sit, watch, and eat snacks. It’s awesome.

At other times, there is a sense of hard work. Of straining under a load to get a few hundred words. They’re good words, it’s a good time, but it is slow going. I’m a mason, building a stone wall, one heavy-ass rock at a time.

Then there are the times when a doom settles in. That is when I know the truth: this is unequivocally the worst shite I have ever written–no, the worst shite ever written in the history of writing. Okay, maybe not that bad, but definitely crap. Total and utter crap. Maybe I’m not a writer after all. Why bother? Who cares?

Luckily, I did that last month. This month, I’m having a period of “this is the Best Thing I Have Ever Written.” Knots that have been tangled for years are unwinding themselves. Revelations appear. Solutions come to me in dreams. I walk through thickets of roses, wonder-struck as they part before me.

It is a most dangerous time.

Grandiosity and fantasies of fame and wealth can suck up creativity and writing time. Ten minutes thinking about how I’ll spend my book advance is ten minutes of creative juice I haven’t put into the novel. However, it can be a wonderful time, if sandtraps are avoided, because so much work can get done. Get it while it’s hot! The muse is riding me and I pray for endurance, and humility, and enough time to get as many pages down as possible.

Anyway, it’s a hell of a lot more fun then the times when, as an alternative to opening the work-in-progress file, I would rather pour gasoline on myself and strike a match.

What an insane activity that produces all of this drama! It’s silly, really. And what is REALLY silly is how compelling all these thoughts are.

There are brief moments of semi-clarity, or, at least, a bit of distance from the roller coaster. In those moments I can see that, yes, I’m in that part of the writing now, where I hate myself, my characters, and god. Or, yes, I’m in that part of the writing now, where I love it, it’s easy, everything is shiny. These things pass. Just sit down, butt-in-chair, and do the work. It’s kind of zen, really. Zen on crack.