Two entries in one week. This must be a treat for you, readers. What a time to be alive, am I right?
I’ve been inspired, you see, after a writing stint that possibly took longer than it maybe should have. Because I’m not one of those writers that gives myself X amount of words to write before I wipe my hands clean and say, “Okay, book, be gone until I bless you with another goal.” No, I write until the scene in my mind feels complete. This could be 10,000 words. This could keep me writing until nine in the morning, leaving me with no choice but to keep myself awake until the next night. This could mean a lot of things, but I trudge through it until I have gotten the damn thing down, otherwise it will torment me into a state of one-track mindedness and boy, do I hate that.
People don’t seem to truly understand when I call my writing both a blessing and a curse. This is just a little taste of what I mean. Is this a sign of genius? I don’t know. Is this a sign of insanity? Probably.
Anywho, what was I saying? Oh, right, writing stint, took too long, yadda yadda.
After closing my laptop to send it off to its own electronic dreamland, it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually written all that much for such a long period of time. I mean, like I said, it’s never my goal to write a certain amount of words, but it still seemed absurd that I had begun writing somewhere around eleven at night and didn’t consider myself done until somewhere around 7AM. I reflected on how I had focused my efforts entirely on one scene; one horrible scene that I absolutely despised writing in the first place and hated even more when revising it, and that’s when it dawned on me that the scenes that are most difficult take me the longest to write.
I don’t know, maybe this is a common thing. I’ve seen plenty of quotes saying things like, “This most difficult things to write are the things most worth writing about.” …Or something like that. I actually might have made that one up (don’t quote me on that, har har). Who knows? I certainly don’t, but whatever. My point is, I’ve heard it plenty of times that you should write about the difficult things, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anybody say that the difficult things take them the longest.
This is, as I’ve stated, the case with me. My theory is, I don’t handle emotional situations well. I’m one of those strange women that hates crying and avoids it at all costs, despite having infatuations with emotional things (um, Doctor Who, anyone?), and this carries over into my writing. I suppose that would be natural, and when I really think about it, I’m not entirely sure why this was even some grand epiphany for me to have. It’s a pretty obvious thing and, yeah, I’m feeling a little silly right now. It’s just that I couldn’t understand why every word seemed to have a length of procrastination attached to it, and after each sentence, I ran to Google to distract me for a time before setting back to writing another torturous line. But I get it now, and I had to share that with you.
I do hope this comes across in my writing. Enough, for example, had this effect on me. That entire story was an emotional wreck of a thing, and this woman who hates crying cried a whole hell of a lot while getting that one out onto the processor. You know, just the act of imagining those emotions and allowing them to consume me as if they were my own. I mean, taking a crap with hemorrhoids isn’t as painful as that thing was for me.
Like I said. Insanity.
Well, with that, readers, I’m off to sleep for a few hours. I look forward to the day when this torment is available for all to feast their eyes upon, and then maybe we can all suffer together as one big happy emotional family.
But without the tears, please. They make me uncomfortable.
-Kelsey
