Writing
I've spent a lot of time in front of a computer this past week. And when I say 'a lot of time', I mean it. I'm talking a 'cluster-migraines-I-don't-remember-the-last-time-I-went-for-a-walk' amount of time.
It got so bad I actually started to wear my glasses again.
But it wasn't nearly as bad as it can get with writing.
There's one thing no one ever tells you about writing when you first get into it, and that's that it will break you if you're not careful. Stories will grab and ride you, and characters will take up residence in your head. You'll force yourself to write the things you don't want, and then force yourself to write the things you want to but are avoiding for completely different reasons.
You'll become this strange shadow of a person, possessed by emotions and voices not entirely your own. A caffeine-fueled, sleep-deprived, temporarily crazy person fighting-migraines and wearing those sexy new eye-sty accessories.
This is what no one ever tells you about writing - especially when it comes to story.
Of course, that old wizard, Alan Moore gave a warning:
"Approach your work with as much awe, compassion, intelligence and practical caution as you would bring to an encounter with a supposed angel, god or demon. Art can kill you or can drive you as mad as any of the six dozen performers in the Goetia of Solomon. And if you doubt me then consider all the crushed or suicided artists, poets and performers."
And so did the older Welsh sources from which Robert Graves possibly drew his sources.
"There is a popular Welsh tradition that on the summit of Cader Idris is an excavation in the rock resembling a couch and that whoever should pass a night in that seat would be found in the morning either dead, raving mad, or endowed with supernatural genius."
(Bye-Gones, Relating to Wales and the Border Countries)
But it's not just at Cader Idris this can happen though. It can happen whenever a human hears spirits both ancient or just-created a little too loudly, and that...that can happen just about anywhere.
The first time I wrote a book, I marveled at how the characters quickly gained life and spoke to me, telling me what must be done with them. I spent days sunk in emotions and thoughts that weren't my own, and at some point, it became a matter of survival to just get it all out. (It's the only exorcism that works really.)
And now I'm courting a different set of newly-born spirits, walking the line between taking their voices in small doses so as to not be consumed by them, and courting them enough that they'll tell me where they want to go.
But at least I know what I'm dealing with now.
It got so bad I actually started to wear my glasses again.
But it wasn't nearly as bad as it can get with writing.
There's one thing no one ever tells you about writing when you first get into it, and that's that it will break you if you're not careful. Stories will grab and ride you, and characters will take up residence in your head. You'll force yourself to write the things you don't want, and then force yourself to write the things you want to but are avoiding for completely different reasons.
You'll become this strange shadow of a person, possessed by emotions and voices not entirely your own. A caffeine-fueled, sleep-deprived, temporarily crazy person fighting-migraines and wearing those sexy new eye-sty accessories.
This is what no one ever tells you about writing - especially when it comes to story.
Of course, that old wizard, Alan Moore gave a warning:
"Approach your work with as much awe, compassion, intelligence and practical caution as you would bring to an encounter with a supposed angel, god or demon. Art can kill you or can drive you as mad as any of the six dozen performers in the Goetia of Solomon. And if you doubt me then consider all the crushed or suicided artists, poets and performers."
And so did the older Welsh sources from which Robert Graves possibly drew his sources.
"There is a popular Welsh tradition that on the summit of Cader Idris is an excavation in the rock resembling a couch and that whoever should pass a night in that seat would be found in the morning either dead, raving mad, or endowed with supernatural genius."
(Bye-Gones, Relating to Wales and the Border Countries)
But it's not just at Cader Idris this can happen though. It can happen whenever a human hears spirits both ancient or just-created a little too loudly, and that...that can happen just about anywhere.
The first time I wrote a book, I marveled at how the characters quickly gained life and spoke to me, telling me what must be done with them. I spent days sunk in emotions and thoughts that weren't my own, and at some point, it became a matter of survival to just get it all out. (It's the only exorcism that works really.)
And now I'm courting a different set of newly-born spirits, walking the line between taking their voices in small doses so as to not be consumed by them, and courting them enough that they'll tell me where they want to go.
But at least I know what I'm dealing with now.
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