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Thursday, May 25, 2006

Writing: the agony and the ecstasy

Writing is such a weird thing to do. Weird, yet perfectly natural, but sometimes I think it's designed to make us crazy. We need to write, but it can destroy you, keep you up all night, drive you mad. Or me, anyway. I love it and hate it at the very same time. Fancy that. I can go to something like BEA and thrive on the energy but come home and feel stuck. Confused. Stare at the page and just stare and stare and stare. Read everyone else's books and wonder if it'll ever happen, then when it gets closed back off. I know I have a blog and all that, but sometimes the idea that people beyond my circle of friends, people who I respect, people who I don't even know but who have major power when it comes to publishing, might read my words: scary. Yet, I forced myself this week to push through the fear and try. That's all I can ask of myself. If one more person, though, says some variation of "I don't know how you do so much" I will scream. It's fine, I realize I can't control what other people think, but in my head, it's never enough and it never will be. I can be happy, I can be satisfied, I can be content with what I've done, but enough? Not quite. I'm proud of things I never thought I could pull off. I'm proud that people like Shari and Jami not only believe in me, but want to read at my reading series. I'm starting to think a little bigger than the tiny world I've created with my words, but still, I don't know what will happen and just try to take it word by word. Baby steps, because they are. Sometimes you have to know when to walk away and come back another day, when the computer screen is just your enemy instead of your friend. Fresh air, people, getting out of my head for once. Trying to calm the nerves and jealousy and chatter, all of it, and just be in the moment, even if that moment isn't a writing moment. I feel stronger, and I need to be because so much hell is breaking loose in other areas of my life, I can't collapse under the pressure. I have never loved limbo. I like answers, facts, knowledge. That's why I could not handle law school at all; you were never done. Writing is like that too, you're rarely officially "done," but you have to know when to say when. I'm working on that. Work in progress, just like my favorite people, who are works in progress and aren't afraid to admit it.

Mark Pritchard write a fabulous post about the rewards of writing that I found so spot on:

You know what the real reward is? It's not the fun of doing a reading and having people applaud, though that's great; it's not the ego-boosting Lunch With Your Editor, something that happens maybe once every five years (that's what people probably are thinking when they see "live the life of a writer" -- yeah baby, lunch on the editor!). It's that glorious feeling of having worked all day, through struggling with characters and pacing and dialogue, and you keep at it, and finally you reach a state of grace and finish a story in a burst of energy and inspiration. And then you go outside and look at the sky and feel as if you've just had the best sex ever. That's why we do it.

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