'Tis not late night as many titles read, but a time of bursting inspiration. Melancholy minds fill paper with ease, a never ceasing typing or scribbling on whatever should be near. Poetry scrawls across too-pale arms and stories unleash themselves in the brains of striving, starving artists.
We craft not with paints or clay, but words that capture the mind, ensnare the senses. Our works cannot be tangibly touched other than the ink they're printed on. Simply free-flowing droplets of quiet inspiration. They have no voice until someone speaks them, no character until they're experienced. Never knowing when to stop, but never knowing what's enough.
The ever ending argument in one's own mind to keep something going too long or quit before the sharp shine of completion. Ink stained fingers and hands cramp from typing or holding far too long.
Red ink and red lines become the enemy, one to overcome and one to surpass, but also the defeat. Hissing voices skitter across the mind and senses, pointing out glaring mistakes invisible to all but the author; a never-ending deluge of terrors and errors.
Sleep is the hero and enemy, an ever-reaching expanse of new ideas and the death of many others, to sleep or to cry out sleep deprivation. The wonder if it's worth the pain to keep the idea. Necks crane from characterizations and finding fitting adjectives.
It's worth it every time, even when it isn't.
Placing a pencil back in its holder screeches failure as a meal is taken for the first time in hours. Eraser shavings litter jeans and tables as words are furiously scribbled out with graphite and grimness.
The words never seem enough. Even when they're far too much.
Surpassing comprehension for a word count, the worst thing those of our craft do, but it is done to achieve and get things done so that people can see and hear and feel. 'Tis folly, 'tis grace. Abandoning showers and family and friends for the tumbles of words that surely won't end. This is our lives and our goals and our dreams but deep, deep, down we know no one sees.
People applaud and people cheer but it's never enough for the reckless achievement we crave. We criticize our Pulitzer Prizes while praising the words of those despised. That or we learn to shun all precious, the beginnings of something magnificent are crushed under the weight of old writers that can't. let. go.
Our minds are not peaceful, we're rare rich or dainty. We aren't really doing it for you and quite frankly when you force us and feel that we have to deliver, expect nothing spectacular, nothing, no sliver. Writing for deadlines or people or crowds is a dark place when reached that's hard to crawl out of. Those who have work of praise and honor started as us,
"Children throwing our lives away."
There is nothing peaceful about a writer's mind. All fiction, all joy? It comes from our follies. We take our pain and warp it to pleasure. Tears become summer rain. Lonely nights become hectic bonfires. Take the emotions and memories and darkness? Switch the pronouns, change the names. The start to a story is in the midst of making.
You can't say writers are wasting time as you read the article about it someone wrote online. Not all of us "make it." Hell, most of us don't. But let me reiterate.
Not everyone wants to. It's not for you.
It is ours. The worlds we create start first and foremost in our own heads.
"Keep Out," a splintered wooden sign says, spit on and pressed on by centuries of students, teachers, people.
And so we spoke out. And so we wrote.
Tell me again "It's just words."
