Am I weird?

Jul 04, 2008 23:29

I’m a writer and thus I suppose the answer to my above question is immediately ‘Yes’.

But given that all writers are weird, I’m wondering if I’m weirder than other writers.

Sometimes when I write a story, either long or short, I get this ‘feeling’. It’s more than just the constant chatter in my brain by the characters, it’s more than my mind wandering over the words written or yet to be written during the day (and night). It’s even more than finding myself visualising a scene and translating that visual into the written word, usually in my head.

It is a palatable attachment.

I desire to write, to share what I ‘see’ and ‘hear’, with other so bad I can taste it.

It is a struggle to work. I can be conversing with someone and a minor detail or word can trigger the muse awake, and my characters jump to life.

Driving is a nightmare, especially alone. I could turn on the radio and blast my mind into numbness, but I fear losing the hold, the words and the vision, (not that that has ever happened).

Sleep doesn’t come easy. I stay up waiting for the rest of the family to retire and I can immerse myself into writing. And the clock ticks silently by until I realise that if I go to bed immediately I will only have 4 hours sleep. Yet I am wide awake and though I lie under the bedclothes in a darkened, almost silent room, with only the night sounds, or worse the predawn sounds, there is no silence within my head. Eventually I sleep; I know that because I am conscious of waking.

Despite only a few hours sleep I wake refreshed. And so do my characters.

And the cycle starts again.

For days I can feel them, see them, hear them, taste them. I desire to be with them, to be involved in their lives, to be the one who lets them out into the world.

My head bursts with words, my stomach churns and there is this particular taste in my mouth. And the words come. And come and come.

Then at some point, it ends.

The vision is there still, the muse still lets me hear the conversations, I still want to write. But the impatience, the overriding need, the taste of it isn't.

That doesn't mean I can't write, that I don't, just that I am not driven to write this particular story. It means that I can slow down, take time and think things through. And write.

Oh and sleep.
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