The Writer Daemon
Above every writer’s shoulder there hovers a writer daemon.
Writers are sick bastards. They feel the messier emotions of everyday life just like the rest of the world. If anything, they may feel them more strongly. Even as the person experiences the emotions, the detached writer side of the brain is dissecting the experience. The writer daemon sits off to the side, processing input like a parallel resistor without decreasing the output. Dispassionately it notes the physical reactions: the hollow feeling of being kicked in the stomach, the odd sensation of feeling the blood drain from one’s face. With a sick sense of glee it names the psychological processes, the preprogrammed series of stimulus and response that leads to each painful feeling. It even red-pencils the errors in logic that lead to such messy, often unfounded emotions, but as any student can tell you, such notations are ex post facto; they change nothing about the present, and the emotions race unchecked and undiminished, synapse to synapse, to close the circuit.
The writer daemon takes notes, systematically filing them away for future use. The emotional rest of the brain protests at this invasion on its private grief-in the first heady rush of unchecked emotion, the human mind resents anything that distracts it from its pain-but the unfortunate writer has no choice but to countenance the intrusion. Even when we might prefer to swat the offending member aside like a mosquito.
Even more unforgivable than objectivity is the fact that, on some level, this twisted misanthrope enjoys the experience. The writer daemon knows all too well how seldom the human psyche experiences real, strong, searing, tearing emotion, positive or negative, and clambers to make the most of it.
I should note here, in case my readers (lol) are becoming concerned, that my life is absolutely peachy just now. The thought behind this post crops up every time I undergo the messier emotions, but at that point I have less abstract things clamoring at my keyboard, and they always win… for the moment. The writer daemon bides its time and takes notes.
Writers are sick bastards. They feel the messier emotions of everyday life just like the rest of the world. If anything, they may feel them more strongly. Even as the person experiences the emotions, the detached writer side of the brain is dissecting the experience. The writer daemon sits off to the side, processing input like a parallel resistor without decreasing the output. Dispassionately it notes the physical reactions: the hollow feeling of being kicked in the stomach, the odd sensation of feeling the blood drain from one’s face. With a sick sense of glee it names the psychological processes, the preprogrammed series of stimulus and response that leads to each painful feeling. It even red-pencils the errors in logic that lead to such messy, often unfounded emotions, but as any student can tell you, such notations are ex post facto; they change nothing about the present, and the emotions race unchecked and undiminished, synapse to synapse, to close the circuit.
The writer daemon takes notes, systematically filing them away for future use. The emotional rest of the brain protests at this invasion on its private grief-in the first heady rush of unchecked emotion, the human mind resents anything that distracts it from its pain-but the unfortunate writer has no choice but to countenance the intrusion. Even when we might prefer to swat the offending member aside like a mosquito.
Even more unforgivable than objectivity is the fact that, on some level, this twisted misanthrope enjoys the experience. The writer daemon knows all too well how seldom the human psyche experiences real, strong, searing, tearing emotion, positive or negative, and clambers to make the most of it.
I should note here, in case my readers (lol) are becoming concerned, that my life is absolutely peachy just now. The thought behind this post crops up every time I undergo the messier emotions, but at that point I have less abstract things clamoring at my keyboard, and they always win… for the moment. The writer daemon bides its time and takes notes.